Introduction
This paper will analyze the Schizophrenia along with its symptoms. It will also analyze an important scene in the movie “a beautiful mind” which was directed by Ron Howard. The main character in the move is John Nash who is played by Russell Crowe; he is supposed to be suffering form of schizophrenia. His wife is played by Jennifer Connelly; she is extremely supportive and caring towards her husband.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is psychological disorder, however this disorder is related to directly to the imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain. Patients suffering from it experience delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and grossly disorganized or catatonic behavior.
Majority of the people who get Schizophrenia fall between 16 to 25 years of age. Through research it is proven that males have a better chance of getting schizophrenia. However after women are 25-30 years of age they may even get it (American Psychiatric Association 2000). Studies support the assumption that Schizophrenia may be an inherited mental illness. A dopamine imbalance is often considered to be the cause the symptoms of schizophrenia. Recent studies propose that serotonin, might also be the cause of the symptoms of schizophrenia.
A specific problem in schizophrenia is noncompliance, which substantially increases the risk of psychosis and the related expensive hospitalizations. Depot or long-acting injection formulations are believed to increase compliance, and may therefore reduce the risk of psychosis and hospitalization (Heeg etal 2008 p633).
The reason behind a person getting schizophrenia is not known completely even though here are a number of theories. Schizophrenics seem to have trouble in coordinating number of activities between diverse areas of the brain. Schizophrenics have intense activity in the in frontal lobe -however there is no reduction of activity in the other parts of the brain. Researchers have recently been successful in identifying particular areas of abnormal activity when schizophrenics experience hallucinations.
Symptoms
There are a lot of symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenics will frequently hear voices. At times the voices are seem to be accusing them, and at times seem to be threatening them.
Schizophrenics get visual as well as perceptual hallucinations. They might even experience Hypersensitivity. An alteration in their Personality is the foremost symptom by which schizophrenia can be diagnosed. Emotion, interest and motivation are completely lost. Alteration in their way of thinking most intense change, as it s them from stop thinking clearly. In forming thoughts they can be sometimes extremely fast and sometimes extremely slow.
Two distinctive symptoms and related characteristics of Schizophrenia are positive symptoms and negative symptoms. As time goes by the seriousness of these symptoms will increase. A number schizophrenics experience constant psychotic symptoms and others just have symptoms at the time of severe episodes and are usually normal before the severe episodes occur.
Even the Positive symptoms of schizophrenia are known as psychotic symptoms. They tend to distort the patient’s normal functioning. Instances are hallucinations and delusions. Positive symptoms are by no means beneficial; however they are symptoms that occur during schizophrenia and may respond more to treatment.
Hallucinations are sensory preceptors; a person does not experience them due to outside stimuli. Thus they are mostly auditory experiences for schizophrenics. For them these experiences are real. Hallucinations result in delusional beliefs this serves as a reason for the hallucination. For example, if a person hears a voice of an alien telling them that they are the chosen earthling to take over the world, the person would figure that they are the Supreme High Commander of the Earth. This would be delusional.
Negative symptoms of Schizophrenia consists of the loss of normal functions, or functions that appear to be absent in the Schizophrenic’s behavior, these symptoms are hard to identify. Negative symptoms carry a poorer prognosis than positive symptoms. A few examples would be social withdrawal, lack of emotional responses, slower movements, or they may not experience basic drives like hunger and apart from they also lose all normal pleasure that comes with satisfying it (Joni 2003 p 25).
A common symptom of Schizophrenia includes a deadening of the person’s non-verbal emotional responses and refers to the lack of outward expression. This is called blunted affect or affective flattening. Blunted people have expressionless and apathetic faces. They are not cheerful or gloomy; they appear rather indifferent. There voices loose all fluctuation and thus this shows that there is never a change in mood.
Anhedonia is stage schizophrenia when the patient does not show any positive feelings. It is the person’s incapability to experience pleasure. Schizophrenics will loose all past interests and socializing. A lot of patients are socially withdrawn and are unsuccessful in interpersonal relationships because of the emotional and cognitive problems they experiencing. The patients usually experiences Social isolation before other symptoms such as hallucinations show up. Schizophrenics may use withdrawal as a way of dealing with other symptoms; as this helps them to reduce stimulation; which inurn make sit easier for them deal with other symptoms. Social withdrawal is accompanied by Avolition, which is a lack of will. The person becomes apathetic and stops working towards goals, or functioning independently.
Lastly, alogia is a form of speech disturbance and another negative symptom. When literally translated it means ‘speechlessness’.
A kind of alogia is poor speech. A person just does not have anything to say. Another form is called ‘thought blocking’. This is where a person’s train of speech is stopped before an idea is completed.
The initial symptoms of schizophrenia might consist of no personal hygiene, depression, forgetfulness, strange behavior, drug or alcohol abuse, a massive change personality, and illogical statements. Normally, antipsychotic, or neuroleptics are used as treatments for psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia.
Treatment
Treatments to help free schizophrenic patients of hallucinations may become a possibility after researchers discovered their underlying cause. Structural and functional abnormalities have, for the first time, been found in specific brain regions responsible for processing voices. Many brain regions have been implicated in schizophrenia but no single region has been consistently reported as abnormal until now (Tanday 2007 p 4).
The best treatment for schizophrenia is medications , some antipsychotic drugs which help in the treatment are:
- chlorpromazine
- haloperidol
- perphenazine
- fluphenazine
Atypical Antipsychotic
- Clozapine
- Risperidone
- Olanzapine
- quetiapine
- sertindole
- ziprasidone
Relevant scene
A Beautiful Mind is a movie about the 1947. A man whose name is John Nash is suffering from schizophrenia.
The movie A Beautiful mind draws an extremely accurate picture of Schizophrenia (Myers 2004 p528). The hallucinations are the most important part of the entire movie; this further supports the accuracy of the film.
The most relevant scene is Nash imagined that he was seeing Russian spies working for the government. Nash saw William Parcher, a maniacal Department of Defense agent. In all actuality, these “Russian spies” were just doctors and people from the hospital walking into the Auditorium. In a panic-like state, Nash frantically ran out of the building, petrified that these spies were out to get him and perhaps catch him or stop him from decoding his secret messages. They tried talking to him, but Nash did not believe them. Alicia shortly found out that this was happening, and was emotionally overwhelmed. She discovered his office where he was decoding things. Nash told his wife to be quiet because the “Russians” had microphones and they would be able to hear her.
This scene depicts every symptom of schizophrenia; it shows how Hallucinations are triggered and how real they are for the patient.
Conclusion
Schizophrenia is mental illness that a lot of people’s lives, it impairs their social and physical functioning. If one wants to see a rue portrayal of it they should watch a Beautiful Mind.
References
American Psychiatric Association (2000); Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-IV-TR Fourth Edition (Text Revision) American Psychiatric Publishing, Inc.; 4th edition.
G. David Elkin (1999); Introduction to Clinical Psychiatry McGraw-Hill Professional p. 41.
Heeg, Bart M. S.; Damen, Joep; Buskens, Erik; Caleo, Sue; de Charro, Frank; van Hout,Ben A (2008);Modelling Approaches: The Case of Schizophrenia.. PharmacoEconomics Vol.26,Iss.8;p.633-648
Joni E. Johnston (2003); The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Psychology alpha books edition 3 p. 25.
Myers G. David (2004); Exploring Psychology, Worth Publishers sixth edition p.528.
Tanday, Sanjay. (2007) Hallucination hope for schizophrenia. GP: General Practitioner p.4-4.