I have done case studies for numerous years but I found the case of John Nash the most intriguing. John Nash was mildly arrogant, charming, and an extremely gifted mathematician. He would scribble mathematical formulas and discoveries on windows in his dorm room, and overall he had impeccable intelligence. He developed a groundbreaking economic theory, to his impressive rise to the cover of Forbes magazine and an MIT professorship, and on through to his eventual dismissal due to schizophrenic delusions.
Nash’s history:
Nash could have had paranoid schizophrenia for years but no one noticed it. It is evident that delusions occur in the mind of a schizophrenic. Perhaps the first indication of Nash’s delusions was when he was observing a glass in the courtyard and noticed a spectrum of light stream out of it. The colours in the light streamed out onto his friend’s tie, and he imagined the tie with an assortment of shapes on it, which didn’t exist in reality. “That is an awful tie,” Nash remarked. Nash first started his delusions when he imagined Charles, his imaginary roommate. He would talk and carry on conversations with this man, and even his wife thought he really existed until with further research, I proved otherwise.
The Term Paper on John Nash and paranoid Schizophrenia
Thomas Szasz once said, if you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. It is a terrible disorder that affects many people around the world. Arguably the most famous person with schizophrenia is Nobel Prize (1994) and American Mathematicians Society’s Leroy P. Steel Prize for Seminal Contribution to Research (1999) winner, John Nash. Paranoid Schizophrenia ...
In part because she was so upset about Nash, his wife Alicia had a growing concern for him. During Nash’s marriage, he would get phone calls from the Pentagon asking him for help to solve mathematical problems. As Nash was approaching the Pentagon, he imagined William Parcher, an FBI agent, who told him that he was needed to decode messages. Nash imagined that a numerical device was implanted into his arm so they knew he was the right person breaking these codes. Nash had a study room where he would cut out newspaper articles and try to find patterns in them. Once he made discoveries, he would go out to a “top secret” house (which was really an abandoned house) where he would put his findings in a mailbox. He imagined shootouts and other chaotic things.
Nash imagined that he went into a car, and people came after him. He imagined gunshots which scared him. At Nash’s work office in his University, Parcher asked him to continue decoding the messages. Nash pleaded to quit, but Parcher said that if he gave up he would tell the Russians. I diagnosed Nash with paranoid schizophrenia because Nash was paranoid in the sense that he yelled out of his doorway into the hallway (people were wondering who he was talking to), and he was panicking all the time that the Russians were out to get him.
He had a psychotic break when he was in his 30’s when he was presenting a speech in the Auditorium of Princeton University as a Math Professor. 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. However, what makes Nash’s case so interesting was that because he was “too clever for his own good”, He snapped back to reality at times and contemplated that everything might not really be real. He tried to slice out the numerical device he imagined was inserted into his arm.
The Essay on Symptoms Of Schizophrenia In Macbeth
In Shakespeares Macbeth, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both show signs of what would today be diagnosed as symptoms of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is defined as "a psychotic disorder characterized by loss of contact with the environment, by noticeable deterioration in the level of functioning in everyday life, and by disintegration of personality expressed as disorder of feeling, thought, and ...
Schizophrenia occurs when other family members have it as well. In Nash’s case I observed no family history of the disease, but one of his brothers was suspected of having the disease. In addition, substance abuse leads to schizophrenia. In Nash’s case, this was the abuse of alcohol which may have been a contributing factor.
Assessment
I gave Nash a mental examination. I interviewed his wife and asked her a few questions. With time, I learned that Nash experienced delusions with characters such as Charles (an imagined college roommate who seems straight out of Dead Poets Society), Marcy (an orphaned girl), and William Parcher (maniacal Department of Defense agent) who were all fragments of his imagination. These delusions seem so fluid and script-like as to make me wonder if schizophrenia is really as slick as depicted.These delusions lead to more prominent symptoms such as extreme paranoia.
Diagnosis
These observations incited me to diagnose him with paranoid schizophrenia. In my assessment, I learned that Nash went to Princeton in 1947, and he was always a typically unsocial man. This behaviour allowed him to be a genius and creative in solving his mathematical problems. Furthermore, with mind studies, other social scientists discovered a possible link or correlation that creativity is possibly linked with schizophrenia.
Planning a Treatment
The treatment I proposed was: Nash was sent to the hospital after his speech in the Auditorium. I said to Alicia (Mr. Nash’s wife): “Imagine … they have been your best friends, now they are not dead, they are not gone, but worse, they have never been…” and Nash eventually told Alicia, “Sometimes I really miss talking to him [Charles]”. The fact that Nash has a loving wife from the very beginning and an academic recognition in the end actually made his transition to the “real world” much easier, as he satisfied some of the desires in an alternative way, imagine other schizophrenia patients who have nothing to hang on to in their “real world”.
The Term Paper on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy For Schizophrenia
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Schizophrenia INTRODUCTION Schizophrenia is a persistent and often unrelenting psychiatric disorder. Twenty-five to fifty percent of patients who are compliant with medication still experience significant symptomatology (Weinberger, 1995). Unfortunately, as many as 50% of patients are not fully compliant with prescribed medications (Hale, 1995). Thus, practitioners ...
Furthermore, Nash was given electric shocks with Electro-convulsion shock treatments and he was given pills to control his delusions. Nash did not want to take the medication any longer when he realized it was getting in the way of him solving mathematical problems, so he decided to go off the medication. When this happened, his delusions reappeared. He thought Marcy was watching his baby when he put him into the bathtub, so the baby ended up almost drowning until Alicia saved her.
Outcome of the Case
Eventually, Nash learned to control his delusions without medication. However, this is still not completely reliable. Schizophrenics often go into remission, or periods of when they do not experience such delusions or hallucinations. Then, they may continue to experience these symptoms again.
Nash convinced himself that the people were not real by telling himself this. At first, when he went off the drugs he was not controlling his thoughts. He told them to go away but they were persistent so he fell into his trap again. But then I talked with him and he knew that he had to prove that he could do this on his own.
