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In the movie, A Beautiful Mind, the main character, Jon Nash is struck with paranoid schizophrenia. His symptoms are primarily positive ones: he exhibits inappropriate behaviors rather than lacking appropriate behaviors. He clearly shows disturbed perceptions including several recurring hallucinations. The most prominent hallucinations include a college roommate for his entire time spent at college, his imaginary roommate’s daughter, and a federal agent. Nash frequently seems distracted and appears to have very disorganized and jumpy thought patterns. The reasons that Jon Nash acquired schizophrenia are not known, but a few theories may apply. Nash seemed to develop schizophrenia at the age most schizophrenics begin to see symptoms: late adolescence. Research suggests that schizophrenia is influenced strongly by genetic factors and then triggered by certain circumstances later in life. Nash may have had a low birth weight or suffered from such birth complications as nutritional and/or oxygen deprivation. He may have encountered prenatal viruses in his mother’s womb. Fluid-filled cerebral cavities in his brain ma