Schizophrenia is the severe brain disorder that affects the mind. Some common behavior that results from having schizophrenia includes hallucinations, disorganized and delusional thinking, inappropriate emotions and disturbed auditory perceptions. It affects about one percent of the US adult population and is generally passed through relatives.
Unfortunately we were not aware of all this information about schizophrenia when we watched the Academy Award winning movie, A Beautiful Mind. The movie is centered around character who has schizophrenia. When we discovered that he was schizophrenic we also were revealed that almost everything we saw him doing and everyone we saw him talking were hallucinations. This was completely shocking news. We were not very educated on the subject of schizophrenia and didn’t realize that they had extremely realistic hallucinations like that. It completely messed with our heads and we both started doubting everything in our own lives and whether it was real or not. Wondering if our lives as we knew them were only hallucinations. Since the character couldn’t distinguish between what was real and his hallucinations it was easy to believe that we too could also have it. It also did not help that the movie was based on a true story.
Now after learning more about schizophrenia I think it’s safe to say that we were being a little over dramatic and had gotten too sucked into the movie. Though we are at the age when schizophrenia commonly develops, we do not have any of the common symptoms of it like disorganized thinking. Along with neither of us have any known family members who have schizophrenia, which is good sign- being that it is commonly passed among families.
Even though the movie completely messed with our minds, it was still amazing and we learned a lot about schizophrenic behavior. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the subject and hear a story about a person who really has schizophrenic and how they live their life trying to work with it.
I saw this movie when I was younger and I can relate to your initial response. The movie vividly displays the common schizophrenic side effect of hallucinations, especially auditory hallucinations, the most common kind of hallucinations. While we are at the age where schizophrenia usually develops, it should be noted that schizophrenia strikes about 1% of individuals and evidence points to some genetic components (i.e. a family history of psychological problems) that can increase one’s chance of developing the disease. Besides hallucinations, the movie also depicts some of the other positive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as disorganized and delusional thinking, disturbed perceptions, and inappropriate emotions and actions. Negative symptoms shown in the movie include absence of appropriate behavior. I don’t remember if they specify in the movie but the protagonist likely suffers from chronic, or process, schizophrenia. This variation of the disease is slow-developing and recovery is doubtful, as opposed to acute schizophrenia.
In my 9th grade health class, we learned a bit about schizophrenia and watched this movie as well. I completely agree in how shocking and even devastating the movie really was, because everything that he thought that he knew was basically all of his imagination, and the medication to fix it made him lose any interest or closeness with his wife and child. It was a huge awakening to me to semi witness the struggles what people with schizophrenia go through on a daily basis. It is definitely a movie that I would also recommend to anyone, because I feel that it does a great job showing not only the side effects of the disease, but the side effects of the medicine that make the patient not want to take it anymore. Overall the movie summed up a tragic disorder unbelievably well.
I have never seen this movie but I have heard about it. I was told it was very realistic hallucinations, which at first is scary. I have for sure questioned weather everything that is happening around me is a hallucination, but then you get into the question about what is life and death, and is their life after death? They say you have 7 minutes of brain activity when you die, and I have heard people questioning is this the 7 minutes we are remembering. No matter how you look at it, it makes everything more complicated. I agree that we are just being dramatic and should embrace what we have, a hallucination or not.