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In the film A Beautiful Mind, actor Russell Crowe does a great job playing John Nash the genius and mental health consumer with schizophrenia. When Nash got sick, treatments were very primitive, consisting of thorazine and insulin shock treatments. The thorazine dulled his genius and the insulin shock treatments seemed even crueler as we watched Crowe's body being racked by violent convulsions while strapped to a bed in four-point restraints.

While studying at Princeton University, Nash developed groundbreaking new mathematical theories, which affect modern economics in many significant ways. He also had paranoid schizophrenia. Since I too have paranoid schizophrenia, I was looking for realism in the movie.

Nash's paranoid delusions were experienced by viewers as indistinguishable from what was to be real. This is good because when we experience delusions it is often difficult to distinguish them from reality.According to the movie Nash saw people who were not actually present along with vivid surroundings, and hallucinated several action sequences involving a number of people who were mere figments of his ill mind. I never saw people who were neither actually present nor hallucinated vivid action sequences. Of my friends with psychotic disorders, not one of them ever described hallucinations as grand as Nash's were in the movie. But we did hear bodiless voices, which I understand is a very common symptom of our disease. According to the movie, Nash did not experience auditory hallucinations, which he did experience in real life.

According to the movie his wife remained with him throughout the tough times of his illness. Not so in real life. She divorced him because she could not put up with his delusions and intolerable behavior. So there are some factual inaccuracies in order to fluff up the movie and make it more appealing to a wider audience.

According to the movie, medication eliminated Nash's psychosis, but left him with little intellectual energy and drive. Still, he was symptom free. The movie seemed to suggest that love, not medication, helped Nash recover from illness. There was a scene where Nash, noncompliant with his medication, was very psychotic. He had a talk with his wife and the psychiatrist played by Christopher Plummer. Plummer's character suggested rehospitalization. Nash was distraught and his wife, played by Jennifer Connelly, offered to tough the illness out with him because she loved him. So the two remained together in their home while Nash remained psychotic. Upon his wife's suggestion, he returned to Princeton University still actively psychotic, unknown to us whether he was medicated or not. To schizophrenics like myself, the movie seemed to suggest recovering from schizophrenia is possible by ignoring the delusions and hallucinations, thereby taming them, not by being medication compliant. I do not think that is a good message since I personally experienced the horrible reappearance of psychosis due to medication noncompliance. That is not to say that medication alone is the answer to recovery, but medication can bring us to a place of stability where recovery becomes possible. We also need the support of a whole community, including professionals interested in seeing us live the fullest lives possible.

Still, I liked the fact that a major blockbuster movie portrayed schizophrenia much more accurately than what we have typically seen from Hollywood. It did not portray a schizophrenic as an insane killer, rather as someone with a mind that distorted reality. Too many people still believe that schizophrenia is a split personality disorder-the movie teaches otherwise. I think it goes a long way to destigmatize schizophrenia even with its inaccuracies. Therefore I would recommend it to people who are not familiar with my disease and who I would like to get a little more educated about it.