Nash's story is well known to anyone paying attention, so I can't see how talking about his schizophrenia is a spoiler. You're acting like this is some fiction thriller, but it is the already publically reported real life story of someone who has been a celebrity in certain circles for several decades now. Not only was the the guy a genius in his field and was a celebrity in that way, he was also a celebrity from having deeveloped schizophrenia which ruined his great career AND for his amazing recovery from that. And if that wasn't enough, he alos won a Nobel in the 1990's. All of these things were reported in the media at their given times. Sorry if you don't read the Science section of USA Today or keep up with Nobel prize winners, but even if you didn't know, his life story was still public knowledge, for anyone who cared.
Not least of all, the book A Beautiful Mind about his life gained a lot of critical praise - the main reason why it got made into a movie. ANd I doubt you can find a book review of it that doesn't mention Nash's schizophrenia (not to mention, it's stated on the book sleeve).
Actually, I have some unresolved questions about Nash's dx of schizophrenia. Clearly he was delusional, paranoid, and hallucinating, and exhibiting "classic" symptoms like flat effect and disordered thinking. However, one thing about higher functioning ASDs that is not well known or well understood is what's called an "autistic withdrawal" where the HFA or AS person begins exhibiting symptoms that parallel strongly that of schizophrenia, excluding flat effect, hallucinations, disordered thinking and paranoia.
Another problem is that the most recent research shows that schizophrenia overwhelmingly affects people of low IQs and lower mental activity, and that there's likely a connection between low intelligence and this disorder. That's to say, while they haven't definitely claimed that people with high IQ can't develop schizophrenia, it does serious raise that question of whether someone like Nash actually has schizophrenia. Seeing that diagnosticians and neuropsychologists are recognizing more and more how often ASDs and similar conditions have been mis-dx'd as schizophrenia, espeically when they exhibit parallel symptoms, it is possible Nash was mis-dx'd.
Nash also claimed that his cognitive ability was more severely affected by the meds than by the "schizophrenia" - this also suggests it's not schizophrenia. Another finding recent research revealed was that people who had schizophrenia (genuinely) nearly universally suffer a notable decrease in IQ and overall cognitive functioning that doesn't seem recoverable, at least with current treatment methods. This wasn't the case with Nash, although it seems that the various drugs he was on did leave residual damage (which is sadly typical of the meds he was rx'd).
While no one "authoritative" has challenged Nash's dx to my knowledge, there seem reasonable grounds to question it. The closest I've seen this question being discussed publically is when some researchers point out how anomalous Nash's case is - if he does truly have schizophrenia, his case is quite extraordinary and unusual, hardly the fate of the typical schizophrenic.
Perhaps that's all it is, a very extraordinary case of this disorder. or perhaps Nash, who exhibited AS-like traits well before his breakdown as well since his recovery, does have an undx'd ASD which is simply co-morbid with schizophrenia, and his ASD may have effected the schizophrenia's presentation (and potentially enabled his recovery). However, I feel that there's still a strong chance this is a mis'dx'd case of autistic withdrawal - his celebrity and genius aside, his story is pretty much typical of what austism researchers know of this condition. And that seems the simplest explanation.
13 Oct 2007, 3:47 pm
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