Thomas Szasz once said, if you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder that affects thought patterns and beliefs. This brain disorder consists of hallucinations, delusions and impaired information processing and communication skills. This disorder affects many people around the world. One of the famous people that are affected by this disorder is John Nash. Nash was one of the greatest thinkers in the mathematics of the 20th century. Schizophrenia impacted Nash’s early life, family, and career. John Forbes Nash was born in the city of Bluefield, West Virginia, USA. He was raised in a conservative, republican and financially stable household. When he was 13 years old, he read E.T Bell’s book, Men of Mathematics which inspired his mathematic career. After winning a scholarship to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Nash was recommended to Princeton University by his professors. Nash developed his Nash Equilibrium and won his doctorate with his work on non-cooperative games at Princeton University.
According to Living with Schizophrenia, Nash began to first show signs of schizophrenia at age 30, while teaching at Massachusetts Institute of
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Debra Wentz, the CEO of the New Jersey Association of Mental Health and Addiction Agencies described Alicia as “a strong, intelligent, capable and warm woman who was extremely supportive of her family”. Alicia was a wife who cared for him and took him into her house even after the couple divorced, which may have prevented him from becoming homeless. In 1959, John and Alicia Nash had a son named John Charles Martin Nash. Charles Nash inherited some of his father’s psychological issues along with his mathematical abilities. According to Dr. Gilda Moreno, a clinical psychologist at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital in Miami, social factors such as having a supportive family helped Nash tremendously while suffering from