Film Analysis: A Beautiful Mind

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In society, mental illness is usually a topic that people avoiding talking about. This fact is shocking because mental illness is one of the hugest health concerns and affects millions of people worldwide. The Center for Disease Control defines it as any diagnosable disorder that impairs a person's mood, thoughts, and/or behaviors (Harrington, 2015, p. 270). I feel that "A Beautiful Mind" was an accurate representation of what it is like to live with schizophrenia. When you hear about someone with mental illness, the first word that comes to most people's minds would be "psycho" or "freak". When people discover that someone is affected by mental illness of any kind, instead of caring for them like you would someone with cancer or heart problems, most people tend to isolate and stay away from them. This is because there is a stigma surrounding people with mental illness. Mental illness can be anything from depression to anxiety, but people with mental illness are usually portrayed in media as homicidal maniacs or violent and dangerous. These …show more content…
However, I found that I really liked the movie because "A Beautiful Mind" turned out to be a precise representation of how mental illness can affect your personal and social life. In the movie, with the help of his wife and Dr. Rosen, John Nash is diagnosed with and treated for paranoid schizophrenia. However, due to disliking the side effects of the treatment, he secretly stops taking it and has a relapse. His condition becomes so serious that he almost drowns his child and hurts his wife because of it. When people have schizophrenia, like Nash, they cannot define what is real and what is a hallucination. For example, John pushes his wife because he thought someone was going to hurt her when in fact there was no one