AP Psychology: Schizophrenia and DID

Disorders Comparison Major Films Three Faces of Eve and A Beautiful Mind involve psychological disorders, disorders that aren’t particularly common. Both films portray disorders from their main characters. Schizophrenia from A Beautiful Mind, and DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) from Three Faces of Eve tell the story of a charcter living with the disorder. Although both disorders are commonly confused, DID and schizophrenia differentiate in symptoms and effects on daily life. Even medication effects can differ between the disorders. Schizophrenia, though more common than DID, has harsher effects short term. With schizophrenia a person frequents hallucinations of voices, jumbled sentences and thoughts, muscle spasms, and inappropriate emotions or actions. DID has symptoms, well more like actions, of multiple personalities. Within DID, the person takes on multiple personalities, talking different, acting different: basically an entirely new person, sometimes even with their own new name. The odd thing about DID is the ‘original’ personality is unaware of the other personalities and has blackouts. Eve White in Three Faces of Eve describes her own DID symptoms as blackouts of no memory, and she has no recollection of actions while within the other personality or another altogether, while her other personality Eve Black knows of her. A main difference between DID and schizophrenia is that the DID person is aware that something is wrong when they have amnesia of daily activities, but schizophrenics do not understand that they have any problem at all. John Nash in A Beautiful Mind believes he is perfectly fine, although he is experiencing hallucinations of voices and people, even his roommate Charles. Nash even has delusions of threats by Soviets and that one may murder his wife and child. Most schizophrenics take different perceptions upon situations, why John Nash could crack codes in his head unlike other agents. Medication to the disorders is also taken