Psychology

Psychology

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A Beautiful Mind

1. Character’s diagnosis in terms of the DSM-IV.

In the movie of a beautiful mind, John Nash depicted negative and positive signs of schizophrenic. In the movie, John Nash fell in the paranoid schizophrenics category, where he portrayed signs linked with the illness (Nasar, 2011). A beautiful mind offers a descriptive story of John Nash, one of the greatest mathematicians. During his early age, John Nash got delusional and begun hearing people’s voices following him, after which he later began having different conspiracies. The first known symptom of John Nash was paranoia and erratic behavior. For instance, Nash believed that all men that wore red ties were part of the communist conspiracy against him (Rahmatullah, 2016). At the start, the disease appeared and would well ahead withdraw when under treatment, but if it wasn’t treated, the symptoms would be part of his day-to-day life.

Statistical guide on mental disorder, DSM-IV characterizes Schizophrenia as chronic mental illness. Considerably, there are limited signs which are relied on while characterizing Schizophrenia. These include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, and hearing voices. People with mental illness disease are found to have two of the criteria mentioned above. John Nash would have hallucinations and hear voices as well as delusions. For instance, when he hallucinates that he has a roommate in his single occupancy at the University. His behavior and progress of his mental disease greatly impacted his social relationships.

2. Development of the character’s symptoms

Nash suffered mental disease, which is identified as Schizophrenia, which is a severe mental disease. Ideally, persons with mental illness have disorganized as well as disturbed thinking, language, and behavior. People that have Schizophrenia have a usual mental function while they have disturbed mental ability in other areas. With regards to Nash, he believed that Newspapers were directing secret messages, which was a false perception (Rahmatullah, 2016). Through the movie, John Nash had lively discussions but later developed delusions as well as paranoia, which are identified in the movie through conspiracy development.

3. Character Treatment

John was treated with Insulin shock therapy and antipsychotic medication, which are offered through repeated injections with large insulin doses. This treatment was considered essential in managing his outbursts and severe symptoms. This regulates and prevents hallucinations, which were serious in his situation. One of the main arguments that I recommend a similar approach is to relieve and control the signs because the treatment would enable him to accept this disorder and disregard the hallucinations.

Another reason is that antipsychotic drug is the mediation that is utilized for bipolar disorder as a short term medication used to prevent symptoms such as psychotic symptoms. For instance, for delusions and hallucinations, the seizures are electrically induced to the patients to offer aid from the psychiatric illness. Studies have indicated that Insulin shock therapy lowers unpleasant signs of patients that are experiencing opiate drawing. Considerably when an individual is offered the treatment, they gain weight, become cooperative, and even calm. After getting the high dose, they will become less hostile, not as much of an argument and aggressive condition. Furthermore, it has been proven that coma therapy results in the loss of psychotic feelings, which are attained by the increase in stupor or coma. This would assist since it might lower delusions that come from psychotic feelings.

In case there was a failed recovery for the patient after receiving the treatment, I would commend the different antipsychotics treatment, which is effective for mental treatment. This medication works in a different way from other antipsychotic treatments because they offer less extrapyramidal impacts than the typical antipsychotics. These impacts are similar tremors, muscle spasms slow movements, and painful muscle stiffness. Another reason why I would recommend this treatment is that it does not result in an induced coma. Ideally, insulin shock therapy would not be effective since it would function for a while after the patient returns to delusions.

Stanford Prison Case Study

1. Group polarization

One reason that prevented the good guards from countermanding or objecting to the commands of the tough guards was group polarization. Ideally, group polarity is considered as the strong point and influence of a team to generate or have extreme sites than others. The bad guards appeared to be more authoritative figures than the good guards who gave them more control in prison (Le Texier, 2019). Group polarization brought about group thinking, which led to good guards conforming to the rules and orders given by the guards.

The harmony bond between the good protectors and the bad guards made them not object to the orders. They considered that countering their associates was to show differences between the good and bad guards, which would create a loophole that the prisoners may use against the guards. The good guards feared to object the bad guards since they openly showed sadistic conduct to the inmates, which be wrong to act as if they were opposing the sadistic guards.

2. Prison System

Considerably the inmates wanted the experiment to effect change in the prison scheme to be as realistic as possible. The scheme could function effectively if they were able to resolve their problems without having to dismantle the change system. Relatively, they might have felt isolated by the outside and never believed that anyone from the outside would be of help since they are detached from the outside. They felt that they had lacked distinctiveness to the outside world, and the only way they could be listened to is by the prison scheme. The inmates classify themselves by their prison ID since they felt that the external world could not help them in solving their problems as inmates.

3. Guard’s Brutality

One major factor is the excessive cruelty without reason for behaving in that manner to the inmates. For instance, some guards acted very cruelly to the inmates even in circumstances that they had no point of behaving that way. The reason for behaving in that manner is because they feel they have the authority over the prisoners. The demand characteristics as a guard are that their anticipated conduct is that they are required to express certain behavior as part of their duties. Therefore, the guards were not aware that they were very cruel to the prisoners. Considerably, despite the fact that a situation does not demand brutality, they are tempted to act brutally since they are powerful. That is the only way they can show their authority.

4. Ethical issues

Considerably, it was immoral to carry out the experiment since it’s not appropriate to trade the distress that prisoners experience for the understanding achieved within the experimentation since these disturbs human rights and laws (Zimbardo, 2017). This is because the prisoners have suffered and tortured even after the trial is over. The experiment has brought about ethical issues since it failed to respect the human rights of the prisoners. This is because it is unethical to conduct experiments that lead to the violation of individual rights.

References

Le Texier, T. (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment. American Psychologist.

Nasar, S. (2011). A beautiful mind. Simon and Schuster.

Rahmatullah, s. (2016). A comprehension disturbance analysis of john nash as a schizophrenic character in “a beautiful mind” movie (doctoral dissertation, uin sunan ampel surabaya).

Zimbardo, P. G. (2017). On the ethics of intervention in human psychological research: With special reference to the Stanford prison experiment. Cognition, 2.