A wonderful mind, when living with schizophrenia is possible

John Forbes Nash, mathematician, Nobel Prize winner in Economics and full-time genius, is the protagonist of “An amazing mind” . A film that, although won four Oscars of the Academy, powerfully drawing the attention of Hollywood studies, managed to attract even more the attention of specialists in psychology and psychiatry, for dealing with the topic of schizophrenia.

This movie tells how this exceptional human being learns to living with schizophrenia throughout his life applying a rule according to which “every problem has a solution.”

Schizophrenia and mental duality

John Forbes Nash He lived in a constant duality produced by his mind having to differentiate between fantasy and reality, due to his illness, schizophrenia.

The hallucinations and delusions never disappeared from his life, but he managed to keep them at bay to the point that, after years between psychiatric hospitals and doctors, he returned to teaching mathematics and was awarded one of the most important mentions in science and the arts.

It was that same brilliant mind that led him to worldwide recognition, while he suffered and fought to overcome his illness.

The question readers are thinking about right now, however, is probably the following: So what are we left with? Is schizophrenia curable or not?

Treatment of schizophrenia

The feature film takes place over almost five decades Within which, the hardest is, without a doubt, the decade of the sixties. In this stage John Nash is admitted to a psychiatric center on numerous occasions.

During their stay there, they briefly portray the abuse of psychotropic drugs, as well as the feared electroshocks that, in the United States, were used to “repair” cases of various psychoses and aggressive states. The reality is that these measures, far from helping patients, constituted another cause of worsening.

Furthermore, the overcrowding of all types of patients, from neurotics to dangerous psychotics, within the same walls, turned these centers into indiscriminate prisons, in which the objective was more aimed at removing these people from the streets than at recovery. .

From this approach a completely opposite approach emerges when the protagonist of An amazing mind appreciates the consequences that, even today, certain psychopharmacological treatments continue to have that are administered in an undifferentiated manner to different mental disorders.

These treatment results are mainly impotence, the tendency to gain weight, concentration problems as well as a state of constant apathy because, in many cases, these include sedative components.

Faced with this, John Nash devises a highly controversial way that is not valid for all patients with which He manages to deal with his illness without having to spend the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital: accept that you have hallucinations and ignore them for the rest of your life.

Jhon Nash, an example of personal improvement

Thanks to his great cognitive capacity and intelligence, Nash He learned with effort, patience and training to differentiate reality from his delusions. It was an example of personal improvement.

This decision raises a series of questions that have not yet been resolved because they are controversial issues on a moral and ethical level.

Is it safe to let a person who has hallucinations walk on the street without their medication? Is the life of a person with a mental disorder really going to have a higher quality being in a psychiatric center than on the street, even if they have to combat their fears? personal? Has schizophrenia been given as much attention as other disorders such as bipolar, or does psychosis continue to be a taboo among mental disorders?

There is still much to know about what the most appropriate answers to these questions may be. But what is clear to us is that Jhon Nash found his particular way of coping with schizophrenia, thanks to his brilliant mind and his personal ability.

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