Susanna Kaysen in Girl, Interrupted, John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, and my grandmother Ida Starobin, all suffer from a different form of a mental disorder. Susanna Kaysen, at the time, is an eighteen year old with borderline personality disorder who is sent to a mental hospital in the 1960’s. John Nash is a brilliant mathematician who suffered from delusions and schizophrenia. His failure to see the truth almost cost him his family along with his job. My grandmother never received any help or treatment in dealing with the trauma she experienced during the Holocaust. Most of her adult life she suffered from major depression and persistent depressive disorder. Although these individuals suffer from different disorders, each of them understands
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His first delusion comes in the form of his roommate, Bettany, at Princeton. Nash is surrounded by other brilliant minds and is under constant pressure to publish. Bettany is always there to give Nash a push and offer encouragement. After being brought in by the Pentagon to crack an encrypted code, his delusions and hallucinations become worse. He believes that he has been recruited by a man named Parcher, who works for the Department of Defense, to look for patterns in magazines and newspapers to ward off a Russian plot. The more he finds in these papers the more paranoid he becomes. Nash has positive symptoms of schizophrenia which include, “delusions and hallucinations as well as disorganized speech and behavior” (Kearnry & Trull, 2015, p. 361-2). Once faced with the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, Nash receives medication and shock treatment. He becomes increasingly upset and frustrated with the side-effects of his medication and secretly stops taken them, which causes a relapse. When his wife realizes what he has done he is faced with the reality of losing his family, and begs her to stay. He focuses on dealing with his symptoms on his own and over times learns how to ignore his hallucinations. He eventually returns to Princeton and begins teaching
His first delusion comes in the form of his roommate, Bettany, at Princeton. Nash is surrounded by other brilliant minds and is under constant pressure to publish. Bettany is always there to give Nash a push and offer encouragement. After being brought in by the Pentagon to crack an encrypted code, his delusions and hallucinations become worse. He believes that he has been recruited by a man named Parcher, who works for the Department of Defense, to look for patterns in magazines and newspapers to ward off a Russian plot. The more he finds in these papers the more paranoid he becomes. Nash has positive symptoms of schizophrenia which include, “delusions and hallucinations as well as disorganized speech and behavior” (Kearnry & Trull, 2015, p. 361-2). Once faced with the diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, Nash receives medication and shock treatment. He becomes increasingly upset and frustrated with the side-effects of his medication and secretly stops taken them, which causes a relapse. When his wife realizes what he has done he is faced with the reality of losing his family, and begs her to stay. He focuses on dealing with his symptoms on his own and over times learns how to ignore his hallucinations. He eventually returns to Princeton and begins teaching