Psychology Imprisonment and Paranoid Schizophrenia - Assignment Example

According to the DSM IV, exhibiting hallucinations and showing negative symptoms, for example, diminished emotional expression warrants one to be paranoid. The impairment Nash showed affected his functioning. The functional consequence indicates occupational and social dysfunction. Nash hallucination sees Marcee as his figment of hallucination, he says “she never gets old”, this prompted Alicia to understand that the people Nash has been seeing are part of his hallucination (Howard, 2001).

Nash exhibited paranoid schizophrenia symptoms. The paranoid delusions are seen when he was fleeing as he believed someone or everyone wants to cause harm to him. The delusion made him restless as he felt the foreign Russians were monitoring him. As a remedy to diagnose Nash, Alicia was of significant help. His mental strength tends to rely on Alicia. As a great mathematician, he had invented a concept that helps in managing dynamics hence his brilliance led him to be employed by the government to break Soviet codes (Howard, 2001).

  Alicia worked hard in making Nash recover his mental normalcy. He received insulin shock therapy, however, the side effects frustrated him hence abandoned them, this lead to a relapse. If the patient had not received treatment, I would recommend the evaluation of the patient's symptoms to erase any other medical symptoms. I would give the patient antipsychotic medication, for example, neuroleptics. Additionally, electroconvulsive therapy and psychotherapy will be appropriate considering Nash being an active person and requires close monitoring.

Most importantly, ensuring the patient starts the medication as soon as possible will be ideal. This will help prevent the replication of the symptoms. The illness cannot be prevented but can be controlled. The acute symptoms will be controlled hence ensuring Nash continuous leading a normal life. Nash learned to ignore the hallucinations with the support of Alicia; he regains his normalcy and permitted to finish his assignment and teaching. He later won a Nobel Memorial Prize for his work in game theory (Howard, 2001).

Management in prison requires the application of effective strategies. Psychological effects prevented the ‘good guards’ from objecting to the mandate of the bad guards. Developments of psychological effects are deemed to affect the ‘good guards’ exercise fewer power roles compared to the ‘bad guards’ (Zimbardo, 1971). Arguably, the “good guards” morality was weakened as they would turn to exercise antisocial acts due to the environment. The complexity in prison when dealing with changes concerns psychological influence that exhibits human behavior.

Compliance with the set rules seems to be the only survival tactic for the prisoners. Setting the norms by having a grievance committee was ideal to have their issues addressed. The guards’ behavior pressuring prisoners and displaying violent behavior led to psychological and damaging situations. The experiment process led to the displacement of “genuine sadistic tendencies’ by some guards (Zimbardo, 1971). Additionally, most of the prisoners were affected emotionally as they were too attached to the roles played.

The trauma overwhelmed them hence it prompted their removal from the experiment. The reaction by the guards to impose fear and exercise their power is based on their uncertainty about prisoners’ reactions. It can be attributed to the harsh environment subjected to prisoners and guards hence acting antisocially. The character also attributes to the personality created at the prison; some guards tend to collaborate with prisoners for protection and get privileges. Zimbardo was the ‘prison’s consultant’ and used the experiment to show the atrocities that often occur in real prisons.

The behavior exhibited by the wardens was necessary to make the experiment successful. Often guards are required to be tough or risk being dismissed or demoted. David Jaffe was actively involved in making one of the guards act tough (Zimbardo, 1971). It was unethical to conduct the study. This is because the participants had no prior knowledge about the intentions of the study and received wrong information about their engagement. Although it helped to understand the significance of situational and systematic forces that influence individual behavior, instances were displayed as some participants expressed their intention to withdraw from the experiment.

This was not observed despite being assured of their right to withdraw anytime from the study. The goodwill of conducting the study and ensuring its success presented an ethical dilemma since its success would bring excellent outcomes, however, the participants risked having their lives interfered adversely beyond recovery (Zimbardo, 1971). The debriefing done was ethical; however, participants were not aware of the negative effects of being persistent. The research was required to minimize harm on the participants and subjection to any inhuman condition.