Title: Psychological Disorder

“A Beautiful Mind” by John Nash

Course: Mathematical Sciences in Mathematics and Psychology

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION.. 3

THE CLINICAL PICTURE OF JOHN NASH.. 3

DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA.. 5

Delusions. 5

Hallucinations. 5

Disorganized Thinking. 6

Abnormal Motor Behavior 6

Negative Symptoms. 6

ASSOCIATED FEATURES RELATED TO DIAGNOSIS. 6

Brain chemistry and circuits. 7

Brain abnormality. 7

Environment 8

TREATMENT OPTIONS. 8

CONCLUSION.. 9

SUMMARY.. 10

References. 11

INTRODUCTION

Schizophrenia is one of the major mental disorders, which affects a person’s ability to look at the world surrounding them in the same way that other people do. Reviewing the case of a famous movie star “A Beautiful Mind” John Nash, whereby the following aspects namely his clinical picture, symptoms, diagnostic criteria, features associated with diagnosis, causes, and treatment alternatives to schizophrenia is covered. How long does it take for a person with schizophrenia to live a normal life again?

THE CLINICAL PICTURE OF JOHN NASH

John is set up as a puzzling genius that is somehow socially unattractive. Later on in the movie we get to see how he becomes affected by schizophrenia. Just in the beginning scenes of the movie, we get to see John introducing himself to other graduate students who undertaking mathematics, where he tried to joke with adequate intentions but ended up affronting other graduate students by referring to their work as imitative and speaking about how he intends to become an “original” abstraction and work it out. After this face-off, John goes back to the room and meets Charles, his roommate who is apparently a graduate student taking English. It is at this particular scene that his schizophrenic delusions start to appear to the audience since the room is meant for a single person.

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Even though the movie does help to clear a precise presentation of schizophrenia but not a proper description of John Nash’s disorder. In the movie, John Nash started to suffer from schizophrenia in his early 20’s, whereas the symptoms of schizophrenia that include hallucinations and delusions John started to have them in 1950s. At that time he was about the age of 30. They are still inside the range of when the attack of schizophrenia can begin after he made innovative contributions to the mathematics field, including the development of game theory. Over the next several decades, Nash was in the hospital many times and he was uncertainty antipsychotic medication as mentioned before by (Rettner, 2015).

 THE SYMPTOMS IDENTIFIED IN DETAILS USING JOHN NASH’S CASE

The first known symptoms of John Nash’s schizophrenia were paranoia and abnormal behavior. According to Alicia his wife, he started to develop the concept that all men who wore red ties are included in a socialist scheme against him.

 John displays numerous schizophrenia symptoms, which include delusions, hallucinations, lack of social relationships, and fear of persecution. The movie portrays Nash’s journey suffering from schizophrenic disorder through life. In the initial scenes of the movie, Nash is an introspective and focused young man looking for the accomplishment of an original idea as he is a graduate student at Princeton’s competitive department of mathematics. It is possible that John is not the same as his colleagues, he does not follow the interpersonal ideas and many social connections. His main social contact is his roommate, Charles, who became his close friend. Nash developed “game theory” which helped him to gain a job at MIT where he meets Alicia who really likes John even though he has social failures. As time goes on, Alicia observes Nash distancing himself from the real world and she realized that her husband suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. Finally, it becomes likely that John needs psychiatric guidance.

 Nash enrolls that Agent Parcher is a hallucination together with Charles and his niece. This is despite having seemed to have a close relationship with them. He started to withdraw from society, maintaining his operations within his house and being taken care of by his wife. The movie did a perfect job to spotlight the depression a psychiatric illness can bring to family. Alicia feels overloaded in having to take care of both Nash together with their new-born son. According to a recent article (Movie Review: Beautiful Mind, 2013)

 Nash shows delusions of grandiosity and ill-treatment and obviously auditory and visual hallucinations in the model of a Department Agent called Parcher whom Nash believed told him that his work would be meaningful for a country. He loses his ability to work, had a social difficulty, falls into the entire madness. John Nash’s bizarre behavior with Alicia he became totally mad, but because of Alicia, he started to recover. Other delusions happen when he is delivering a speech concerning his mathematics research. As he gave the speech John notices sees men dressed in suits in lecture hall’s aisles. Nash thinks these men are soviet spies sent to arrest him. Due to his delusions, John left the room in a rush and is hunted by the apparent Soviet spies. It turns out that the alleged spies, are in actual sense men sent to take him back to the psychiatric hospital to be treated of his disorder. As mentioned by the unknown author at (A Beautiful Mind: Analyzing how schizophrenia is portrayed in the movie versus reality).

 DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA

As stated by the DSM-5, schizophrenia is diagnosed when a person exhibits more than one symptom of the following which must be delusions, hallucinations, or disorganized thinking for at least a month or longer period. More symptoms are abnormal motor behavior and negative symptoms. Look at the following key features that define the psychotic disorder a little bit more in-depth.

Delusions

One definition of delusion is that it entails fixed beliefs, which are often not agreeable to change given contradictory evidence. This condition comes in various themes, namely persecutory, referential, somatic, religious, grandiose, and bizarre.

Hallucinations

These are perception-like experiences, which transpire without an external stimulus. Even though it can happen to all sensory modalities, it is common in auditory. Occurs in the context of a clear sensorium. Lastly, they are considered a normal part of religious experience.

 Disorganized Thinking

 Also, called formal thought disorder. Implied from a person’s speech. Examples include derailment, loose associations, tangentiality, incoherence, thought blocking, or mutism.

Abnormal Motor Behavior

Volitional or goal-directed behavior is affected by examples includes illness, catatonic behavior, or erratic agitation. Catatonic behavior is a noticeable fall in reactivity to the environment. An example of catatonia includes negativism, bizarre postures, stupor, purposeless activity, or echoing of speech. It is also important to note that catatonia is not a symptom exclusively associated with schizophrenia.

Negative Symptoms

Are observe as the absence of behavior. Examples include diminished emotional expression, alogia, anhedonia, and avoliation. Alogia is manifest by reduced speech output. Conversely, Anhedonia is the diminished ability to feel pleasure from positive impetuses. Avoliation is a decrease in motivated self-initiated purposeful activities. These symptoms are more prominent in schizophrenia.

Hence, the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia using 5 criteria are:

Criteria: 2 or more of 5 domain psychosis mentioned above

B criteria: Significant deterioration in functioning

C criteria: 6 months of symptoms, with at least a month of meeting A criteria. 

D criteria: rule out mood disorders

E criteria: rule out substances and other medical conditions

F criteria: what to look for if the person also has Autism Spectrum Disorder

ASSOCIATED FEATURES RELATED TO DIAGNOSIS

There are many symptoms, which donate to a schizophrenia diagnosis namely the unprofessional affect- for instance, laughing without any stimulus- lack of sleep, disturbed mood(such as depression, anger or anxiety,), depersonalization( the feeling of disconnectedness from oneself), de-realization(the feeling that one’s surrounding’s are unreal), the lack of comprehension of the disorder, the social cognition deflects, aggression and hostility, and cognitive failing impacting language, processing, executive function, and memory. Cognitive disability caused by the disorder may function when other symptoms are in the absolution from the article written by (Hurley, 2020).

 CAUSES OF SCHIZOPHRENIA

The causes of this mental disorder are yet to be known. Schizophrenia is a serious illness that has a biological basis. So, researchers have exposed the figure of things that seem to make someone more probable to get schizophrenia, together with the following factors:

 Genetics

This disorder can run in a family. This implies that there is a higher likelihood of children inheriting it from their parents.

 Brain chemistry and circuits

Individuals who suffer from schizophrenia may fail to modulate brain chemicals referred to as neurotransmitters, which control particular nerve cell pathways that affect both behavior and the ability of thinking.

 Brain abnormality

 Researchers found an abnormal brain structure in individuals’ excruciation with schizophrenia, but it does not hold for all people who have schizophrenia.

Environment

 Things such as, exposure to toxins such as marijuana, viral infections as well as increasingly stressful situations could trigger schizophrenia in individuals whose genes increase their chances of getting this disorder (Bhandari, 2020).

 TREATMENT OPTIONS

 The objective of treating schizophrenia is to relieve the symptoms as well as to reduce the likelihood of a relapse. The treatment of schizophrenia includes:

 Medication

Many medications applied in the treatment of schizophrenia are antipsychotics. Even though these drugs are incapable of curing schizophrenia, they help to ease the most distressing symptoms, such as hallucinations, thinking problems and delusions.

The old antipsychotic medications used comprise of Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), Fluphenazine (Prolixin), Haloperidol (Haldol), Oxilapine (Loxapine), Perphenazine (Trilafon), Thiothixene (Navane), Trifluoperazine (Stelazine). Then the newer drugs used to treat schizophrenia include Aripiprazole (Abilify), Aripiprazole lauroxil (Aristada), Asenapine (Saphris), Cariprazine (Vraylar), Brexpiprazole (Rexulti), Lumateperone tosylate (Caplyta), Clozapine (Clozaril), Iloperidone (Fanapt), Lurasidone (Latuda), Olanzapine (Zyprexa), Paliperidone (Invega Sustenna), Paliperidone Palmitate (Invega Trinza), Quetiapine (Seroquel), Risperidone (Resperdal), Ziprasidone (Geodon). 

 Therapeutic Approach

 According to the most recent treatment criteria for the schizophrenia disorder, medication alone cannot be effective in the treatment of this disorder. Therefore, such approaches are normally administered together psychosocial strategies, for instance, the various forms of therapy. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is among the most effective forms of therapy for any type of mental condition. This therapy approach applies goals, mindfulness, and action steps to enable patients to identify and normalize bizarre behaviors and thoughts, to maintain healthier relationships and to adopt favorable coping mechanisms. This therapy approach can be used by one or a group.

Other forms of therapy, which may be effective for schizophrenia patients consist of motivational interviewing that focuses in helping a patient to maintain positive changes. There is also solution-focused therapy that entails setting goals and working towards achieving them. Lastly, there are experiential therapies such as music, art, animal therapy, adventure therapy, or drama therapy.

 Additional Support and Treatment

The most effective schizophrenia treatment plans comprise of particular elements of therapy and medication but supplement these treatment with extra support. The inclusion of social support is very important in treating schizophrenia, social skills, and family and social education. This event may include the use of support groups, group therapy, social skills training, as well as family psychoeducation. To be specific family psychoeducation entails working with the patient’s family to get a deeper understanding of the condition, including approaches to support and live with loved ones suffering from this disorder.

The treatment and addressing of secondary issues, in a holistic approach is necessary for the effective management of this mental disorder. Such issues may comprise of healthy eating and weight loss, to help lessen the antipsychotics side effects. Also, it entails addressing the cessation of smoking since this behavior is common among schizophrenia patients. These patients may also experience substance use disorder or co-occurring mental illnesses, which need to be diagnosed for treatment purposes. As a final point, there exists support services which help schizophrenia patients who are coming out of treatment to lead a more independent life. Such support services entail job, skills and vocational training, transportation, participating in the community (Schizophrenia Therapy and Medication)

CONCLUSION

We have described an approach to understanding the clinical picture, symptoms, and concept used as a criterion by researchers to arrive at a diagnosis of schizophrenia disorder, features related to the diagnosis, and also understanding what exactly causes schizophrenia and how it treated using John Nash’s case to conduct this series of information. Schizophrenia is a serious disorder that can pass from parents to their children. With a dedication to ongoing treatment, receiving enough care, love, and support the most individuals can live a normal life.

 SUMMARY

Looking at the first part of the assignment we go about introducing what is schizophrenia. Second, we presented the clinical picture which includes both symptoms and clinical signs of schizophrenia using John Nash’s case. Focusing on John Nash’s only symptoms in more into details which are Hallucinations and Delusions. In the fifth part, we talked about diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia using the DSM-5 in explaining the key features of psychotic, which are Hallucinations, Delusions, Abnormal Motor behavior, Disorganized thinking capacity, and lastly, negative symptoms followed by using the five criteria in building the diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia. A part of where we list the features related to the diagnosis. The causes are separated into four factors namely Genetics, Brain chemistry and circuits, Brain abnormal, and the environment. Finally, Treatment options are explained for schizophrenia, which are medication, a Therapeutic Approach, and additional treatment and support option.  A person with schizophrenia does need support, love, and care as he is still human.

References

1. Thacker, M., and Hughes, C. (2013). Movie Review: Beautiful Mind. Retrieved from: https://meridian.allenpress.com/mhc/article/2/8/246/36964/Movie-Review-A-Beautiful-Mind
2. Rettner, R. (2015).How “Beautiful Mind” Mathematician John Nash’s Disappeared. Retrieved from: https://www.livescience.com/51058-schizophrenia-recovery-john-nash.html
3. Hurley, K. (2020).Schizophrenia: DSM-5 Definition. From https://psycom.net/schizophrenia-dsm-5-definition
4. Bhandari,S. (2020).Schizophrenia: An Overview. Retrieved from https://www.webdm.com/schizophrenia/mental-health-schizophrenia
5. Wiehahn, G. (2016).Transition to DSM 5: Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZhlRA79wtM