A Beautiful Mind (2001)
A Beautiful Mind. RottenTomatoes.com. [October 3, 2025], https://go.iu.edu/8vCZ
The following blog post was inspired by my major, social work, specifically about individuals with psychological disorders/disabilities. I wanted to analyze how treatment and helping professionals influence the patient’s ability to cope and live with the disability. A Beautiful Mind allowed me to do just that, following John Nash’s story living with schizophrenia. The movie was based on a true story, which makes the analysis even more applicable to how helping professions should cater to client needs.
Introduction
A Beautiful Mind. TheFilmExperience.com. [October 3, 2025], https://go.iu.edu/8vD2
The movie begins in 1947, with John Nash getting into graduate school for mathematics at Princeton University. He is played by Russell Crowe, who portrays his character as timid and antisocial–mostly keeping to himself. Nash expresses his desire to work with governing dynamics and hopes to distinguish himself as an academic through an original idea. While at Princeton, Nash meets his roommate Charles Herman; Charles pushes him to think outside of the box and the two become good friends. Eventually, Nash’s experimental work leads to him discovering a breakthrough in an old economic theory and earning a place in a prestigious laboratory called Wheelers.
After five years of working with and leading a research team at Wheelers, Nash became renowned for his mathematical skills. His talent gets him noticed by the Pentagon, who request his help cracking Moscow radio transmissions. His ability to see codes and patterns in the transmissions catches the eye of William Parcher, who introduces himself as an employee at the Department of Defense. He asks Nash to join his operation “Office of Strategic Services (OSS),” working to decipher codes hidden in newspapers and find where Russian bombs will be deployed. Simultaneously, Nash starts teaching a multivariable calculus course at Princeton, where he enters a romantic relationship with his student Alicia Larde and the two soon get married. Nash continues working on deciphering codes and conspiracy theories for Parcher, when Charles shows up on campus to reconnect with Nash and introduce him to his young niece, Marcee. Nash’s work is in secrecy, which closes him off from his wife and students; however, when Nash is giving a guest lecture at Harvard University, he sees three men in suits enter the room and block all exits except one. Nash flees mid-lecture, an ongoing pursuit begins and one of the men introduces himself as psychiatrist Dr. Rosen. Nash is convinced he and the other men are Russian spies and so he fights them. Ultimately, Rosen has him sedated and takes him to the MacArthur Psychiatric Hospital.
In-Patient Psychiatric Treatment
A Beautiful Mind. VHCorner.com. [October 3, 2025], https://go.iu.edu/8vD4
When Nash wakes up at the psychiatric hospital, his arms and legs are in restraints. He sees Charles in the corner of the room and begins yelling at him, feeling betrayed. Rosen tells Nash that there is no one but them in the room and diagnoses him with schizophrenia. It is additionally revealed that William Parcher was also not real. The language used around Nash’s disorder carries a lot of weight in the film; Alicia, horrified, tells Nash that he is “sick.” While it may be true that Nash was struggling with a disability that impaired his daily life, the connotation of the word “sick” implies his ostracization from society and furthermore paints his schizophrenia as a burden to fix. Furthermore, the psychiatric professionals administer treatment to Nash in a slightly inhumane way. They latch him down onto a bed using restraints to relieve his seizing. Then, they inject him with insulin and begin treatment while Nash is clearly in pain. Alicia asks Dr. Rosen how long the treatment will last, to which Dr. Rosen replies that treatment will continue five times a week for ten weeks.
Medication and Adjusting to Life Outside of the Hospital
A Beautiful Mind. ReadingatRecess.com. [October 3, 2025], https://go.iu.edu/8vD5
When Nash is released from MacArthur Psychiatric Hospital, he is required to take medication for his schizophrenia once a day. However, he is hesitant to take his medicine, implying his humility at having to be medicated. Additionally, the medicine has undesirable side effects, such as Nash’s inability to work as a mathematician or teacher at Princeton, his inability to help out with his and Alicia’s baby, and severed his connection with his wife. While on the medication, Nash seems reserved, unmotivated, disengaged, and lost in thought. His quality of life has not improved since receiving treatment, rather it has arguably decreased. The stigma and dissatisfaction that surrounds his medication leads Nash to stop taking it, unbeknownst to his wife’s knowledge. Since being off his medication, Nash begins to see Parcher again, who urges him to continue his code deciphering work. Two years pass and Alicia thinks things are going well until she discovers the shed in the backyard is filled with Nash’s conspiracies. She runs into the house to confront her husband only to find their baby alone in the bathtub with the water still running. Nash insists that Charles was watching the baby–but Alicia, now terrified, takes the baby and calls Dr.Rosen’s office. Nash refuses to go back to the hospital, believing that if he returns, he will spend the rest of his life there. Eventually, Nash, Alicia, and Dr.Rosen come to an agreement that allowed Nash to remain at home without medication under the premise that Nash would be searching for another solution to his treatment that did not involve hospitalization or medication.
Analysis
A Beautiful Mind. FilmMusicCentral.com. [October 3, 2025], https://go.iu.edu/8vD7
Nash’s desire to independently seek a treatment option that is viable to him demonstrates client self-determination, or the ethical principle that clients have the right to make their own informed choices about their life, treatment, and care. Although Dr.Rosen initially had all the control in Nash’s treatment, steps back and allows Nash to come to terms with his disability on his own. A key principle in social work and the helping professions is allowing the client to develop self-efficacy, which is the ability to feel competent and succeed in a given task. The film then follows Nash on his journey of developing self-efficacy as he learns to ignore his hallucinations and live with them instead of taking medication to get rid of them. He is able to be reinstated at Princeton University through an old friend of his from graduate school. Soon, Nash begins teaching again as well. Although his schizophrenia never went away, Nash learned how to live around it and succeed on his own. The film ends with Nash accepting a Nobel Prize for his work in economics. Nash reveals that while he is on newer medication for his schizophrenia, he still sees the characters and fantasies that he had been seeing since graduate school. However, we see him growing more and more comfortable with living with them and that he has a choice to not acknowledge them. The comparison between the rigid treatment Nash experienced at the beginning of his diagnosis and the self-deployed treatment that Nash develops shows that clients have the power to control their own journeys. Additionally, Nash wouldn’t have been able to succeed if it wasn’t for the support of his wife Alicia, which emphasizes the importance of social supports through the journey of building confidence, adjusting to treatment, and actualizing self-determination and self-efficacy.
Valerie Terew is a sophomore at Indiana University studying Social Work (major) with a focus on Political Science (minor). This is her second year with IU Media Services and she is particularly interested in movies that portray or make the viewer think critically about social justice.
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