Two different realities.
A beautiful mind, tells the story of John Nash, a graduate student from Princeton University who suffers from schizophrenia. Considered a genius in mathematics, John Nash met his best friend Charles, who also was his roommate as soon as he arrived to Princeton. With his best friend Charles and some other friends that he met a Princeton University he goes out to a bar, where he was not able to establish a relationship with a women. At the same time, he was struggling in writing his thesis, John finally makes it and he then sets off to MIT, where he is working as a teacher. While working as a teacher at MIT, one of his students Alicia approaches him and they arrange themselves to go for a date, they fell in love with each other and eventually they got married. John Nash went back to Princeton University where he met again with his ex roommate Charles, he is very happy to see him again. Back at Princeton is where he meets with Charles niece Marcee which she eventually loves John and even calls him “Uncle John.” John feels the same love for Marcee; he loves her as if she was her own niece.
While John Nash is at Princeton he gets invited to the United States Department of Defense Facility where he meets Parcher, and he saw John’s abilities. It was since this day that Parcher gave John an assignment, which consisted in looking for patterns in newspapers and magazines. This assignment was needed for a soviet plot. John was very into this job where he spends hours working and his whole office was full of the pattern that he found in all the newspapers and magazines. The job also consisted in him writing all of his findings and he then had to send them, where he had to put them in a special mailbox that he had the access code of the gates in his arm.
One day, while John was delivering a speech at Harvard University, he saw people coming in to the auditorium where he was delivering his speech, thinking that these people were soviet kidnappers he tried to run away from them, it was at this point where he was sent to a psychiatrist. John Nash was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Charles, Marcee, Parcher they were all people who only existed in his imagination, he never had a roommate when he was at Princeton, Dr Rosen called to the university and he found out that he had a single room during his time there, while telling all of this to Alicia, she could not believe it, since she had heard so much about Johns “best friend Charles.” Desperately Alicia founds everything about the work, finding patterns in magazines and newspapers that John has been doing, she then goes to the secret mailbox where the findings were delivered by John and he found all of them. Alicia then took them to the psychiatric hospital where John was, she showed them to him and it was this time that John admitted and realized about all the hallucinations that he had. After being medicated for a while, he then returns home where he again refuses to drink his medicines. His hallucinations begin again and he starts doing his work for Parcher all over again. One day Alicia founds out about it and she runs back to him, when she found out that their baby was in the bathtub about to drown, Alicia saves the baby and confronted John, but he argues that Charles was taking care of him. Desperately Alicia tries calling the psychiatrist, but John does not let her, thinking that Parcher will kill Alicia and his baby. John then realized and accepts his hallucinations back again and consciously he says goodbye to Marcee, whom John realized that she has been the same girl since the first day that he saw her and Charles. John is able to return back to Princeton University and he then wins the privilege to teach classes again. John wins the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics. When John was leaving the auditorium in Stockholm he sees again Marcee and Charles, but this time he decides to ignore them.
John Nash suffers from Schizophrenia, which is a disease that makes it difficult for you to distinguish between reality and the hallucinations or delusions that you are having. It begins in early adulthood. Schizophrenia affects the way that people acts, thinks and sees the world. They believe they hear or see things which are really not happening, they believe that people wants to hurt them and feel that they are being watched. (Smith and Segal, 2014) People who suffer from schizophrenia, have a split in their reality. The people who suffer from this disease, usually experience a social drift, this is because the people will eventually not be able to get a good job and therefore the income for the people is very low and at the same time the cost of this disease is very high.
The symptoms of schizophrenia are divided into positive (addition of something) and negative symptoms (taking away something.) Positive symptoms include disturbed perceptions, hallucinations, which refer to experiencing something that is not there referring to the 5 senses. Delusions, which refer to disorganized thinking is believing something that is not there, but then again it could be true what you are believing. On the other hand, negative symptoms include no emotions to do anything. Anhedonia, which is the loss of pleasure from the things that would have given us pleasure if the disorder was not present. Another symptom of schizophrenia include alogia which is the loss of speech and the vocabulary becomes very limited at the same time the emotions of a person who suffers from schizophrenia becomes limited. Schizophrenia is not a common a disease, worldwide about 1% of the total population suffers from this disorder. In the United States approximately 3.2 million people are suffering from schizophrenia. Nearly 1 in 100 people suffer from schizophrenia. (Nemade & Dombeck, 2009)
During this movie we can see actions, which fit directly to the symptoms of schizophrenia. Firstly, John Nash as hallucinations, this is because he is experiencing something that is not there. He is seeing people who are not there including Charles, Marcee and Parcher. John clearly believed that these characters existed, he consulted everything with Charles, he was even the one person who convinced him to get engage and marry Alicia. Marcee, a little girl who John loved, like a nice to him, but throughout the time he notices that Marcee does not change, she is the same little girl who he met the first time, and Parcher, that one person who told him what to do for his job, the evilest out of the three of them. John Nash, could not differentiate these people from reality, he could not tell that these were just imaginary people who never existed. Likewise, John suffered from delusions, this is because he had false believes, he believed that the Soviet kidnappers will capture him at the same time, he believed that all the report on his findings would been delivered to the government, but unfortunately this false beliefs that he had were all a cause from his disease.
The potential causes of this disease are due to an over activity of dopamine in the brain, an abnormal brain activity, and maternal virus during pregnancy and schizophrenia is highly genetics. Schizophrenia is a disease, which cut across the income lines, ratio lines and class lines, this means that everyone is likely equal to have schizophrenia. The genetic vulnerability would be a very good predictor of this disease. I hypothesize that the main reason why John Nash would have schizophrenia is because of his genetic information. This is because the main cause for this disease is due to genetics.
During this movie, the portrayal of the disorder is very accurate, since even us as the viewers we are catched into John disease and we think that all the people that he is having hallucinations with are real people. It is not until the end of the movie, when he is sent to the psychiatric hospital where we realize that Charles, Marcee and Parcher are people who only exist in John’s imagination. Everything seems so real, John makes it look as if everything is his reality and this is when difficulty in separating the reality with the hallucinations and delusions joined together. Although John had a difficult time overcoming this disease, he was able to overcome it. Schizophrenia is a disease where you need to have a treatment so you can be able to cope with it and eventually be able to overcome it. We can see how at the end of the movie, right outside the auditorium where he received the noble prize he sees Marcee, Charles and Parcher standing right across him, he just decided to ignore them and move on with that special moment, not getting distracted by his hallucinations.
During the movie there were no incorrect statements, actions, or behaviors portrayed. Although, there were some symptoms that were not portrayed in this movie. Only positive symptoms of schizophrenia were shown, the negative symptoms were left out, during the movie we did not see anhedonia, alogia or flat effect. This are symptoms that schizophrenic people suffer, therefore the should have been present in the movie in order to have a better view and idea of what people going through schizophrenia are really suffering.
To conclude, we can state that A beautiful mind is a good interpretation of the life of a person who suffers from schizophrenia, while watching the movie, the viewers become very familiar with the disease, at the same time this movie portrays how people can live with the disease and the way that they can overcome such disease.

Work cited
Melinda Smith and Jeanne Segal, Understanding Schizophrenia. Retrived from http://www.helpguide.org/articles/schizophrenia/schizophrenia-signs-types-and-causes.htm Rashmi Nemade and Mark Dombeck, Schizophrenia Symptoms, Patterns and Statistics and
Patterns, Retrived from http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=8805