John Nash born in West Virginia in the year 1929 went on to become a world famous mathematician. John Nash graduated from graduate school in Princeton where he showed flashes of his brilliance. Some of his contributions in mathematics are in game theory, partial differential equations, differential geometry etc and all these have a role in our day-to-day life in complex means. John Nash revolutionised the field of economics with his doctoral thesis, “Nash Equilibrium.” In the year 1994, John Nash got the coveted Nobel Prize for his contribution in Economics. He got the Von Neumann Prize and various other awards during his glittering career as mathematician and economist. However, in the life of John Nash there was a big struggle.

You may wonder what the relation between John Nash and Schizophrenia is! Schizophrenia can be termed as a disorder of brain, which affects young people in the age group between 17 and 28. The movie “A Beautiful Mind” throws light on the John Nash Schizophrenia phenomena. Movie takes viewers through the struggle as well as re emergence of a mathematician from paranoid schizophrenia. “A beautiful Mind” is the cinematic version of the john Nash’s biography written by Sylvia Nasar in the same name.

John Nash’s Schizophrenia recover was not a pretty one. It took three decades for John Nash to recover from schizophrenia with the help of antipsychotic drugs. However, it threw lot of questions regarding the effectiveness of antipsychotic drugs and its efficiency in long-term recovery process. Not just John Nash, there is a long list of famous people who suffered from schizophrenia which includes Meera PopKin, Andy Goram, Bob Mosley, Lionel Aldridge and many more.

John Nash’s wife admitted him to McLean Hospital in 1959 after prolonged erratic behaviour and fear about some organisation chasing him. There the doctors’ diagnosed John Nash paranoid schizophrenia as well as clinical depression. After his release, he tried to obtain political asylum in East Germany as well as France. French police deported him back to USA after arrest as per the USA government’s request.

He after getting admission at a hospital in New Jersey in the year 1961 started undergoing insulin shock therapy as well as antipsychotic medications. For around nine years he continued treatment in various hospitals and after 1970, he refused to visit any hospital and never took medication. John Nash believed that antipsychotics drugs are not that effective and people do not consider the ill effects that the mentally ill patients have to suffer due to it. As per his words, Nash made a gradual recovery from schizophrenia over the due course of time.

There is a fact to be looked upon, a good number of schizophrenia patients in developing countries recovered from it. While schizophrenia patients in USA as well as other developed countries remains chronically ill. Studies also point out that those who gave up antipsychotic drugs gradually recovered from schizophrenia. Therefore, it is obvious to think whether antipsychotic drugs helped John Nash in any manner in his recovery! John Nash’s recovery from this chronic illness showed that living life in a simple manner is more effective than drugs.