"Are We Alone"
- Broca's Brain - lives, our religions, and science. Sagan causes the reader to consider questions such as,...
- An Introspective Look At Steven Spielberg, America's Top Film ... - can muster up is his imagination. Even in his early years Spielberg was fascinated by the...
- We Need A Strong Space Program - neighbors pique the curiosity of generations who want to know the answers to the question: Are...
Submitted by rustyc on 06/30/2008 05:21 PM
- Category: Medical
- Words: 1582
- Pages: 7
- Views: 37
- Popularity Rank: 1029
"Are We Alone"
Are We Alone?"
An In-depth Explanation of Schizophrenia
"The first visible signs of John Forbes Nash, Jr.'s slide from
eccentricity into madness appeared when he was thirty and
was about to be made a full professor at MIT. The episodes
were so cryptic and fleeting that some of his younger colleagues
at that institution thought that he was indulging a private joke
at their expense. He walked into the common room one winter
morning in 1959 carrying The New York Times and remarked,
to no one in particular, that the story in the upper left-hand corner
of the front page contained an encrypted message from inhabitants
of another galaxy that only he could decipher. Even months later,
after he had stopped teaching, had angrily resigned his professorship,
and was incarcerated at a private psychiatric hospital in suburban
Boston, one of the nation's leading forensic psychiatrists insisted that
Nash was perfectly sane. Only a few of those who witnessed the
uncanny metamorphosis grasped its true significance.
At thirty years of age, Nash suffered the first shattering episode of
paranoid schizophrenia, the most catastrophic, protean, and mysterious
of mental illnesses.
Lambert 2
For the next three decades, Nash suffered from severe delusions,
hallucinations, disordered thought and feeling, and broken will." (Nasar, Sylvia, A Beautiful Mind)
The word "schizophrenia" stems from the Greek schizo, meaning, "split." But phrenia refers to the diaphragm, which was once thought of the location of the mind.
Of all the mental illnesses, schizophrenia is probably the most distressing, disabling, and devastating. The first signs of the illness are typically seen in adolescence or young adulthood with the effects of the illness shocking families...
You must Login to view the entire paper.
If you are not a member yet, Sign Up for free!
