I just finished reading Sylvia Nasar’s biography of John Nash: the brilliant mathematician who did his best work in his twenties, was schizophrenic from his thirties to his fifties, and then spontaneously recovered in his sixties and went on to win the Nobel Prize.

Nasar says three things helped Nash recover – his own persistence in trying to get better, the support of his wife and friends, and the natural body changes that come with aging. He had not been taking any medicine, or in fact any kind of treatment, for his condition for the twenty years prior to his recovery.

The support of his wife and friends and no drugs: now that is something that is difficult for a lot of us to accept, and it goes against political correctness. In the film version  Nash’s character claims that newest generation of antipsychotic medicines ‘don’t cure (him), but they help.’ The real John Nash, when asked if this was true, denied it, and attributed the ‘quote’ to artistic license.

Many ‘advocacy groups’ for mental illnesses praised the film, but Nash’s real experience (as opposed to the film) goes against their current official stand on psychopharmacology - that drugs are necessary to cure mental illnesses. It seems to confirm what anti-establishment psychiatrists like Peter Breggin have said: recovery from mental illness needs a ‘healing presence’ - one element of which is love and acceptance - rather than a prescription of medicines.

Nash himself has said he was lucky he refused to take his medicines and could get away with it. Taking antipsychotic medicines over years leads to a kind of mental fog, and causes tardive dyskinesia - distressing abnormal movements and tics - that would have made his gentle reentry into normal life impossible.

Of course, love alone is not enough. You need knowledge, skills, and resources. Medicine alone is not enough either, and it can actually be harmful.

Susan Vinodh Pandian

Read more about mental illness and recovery:

1. The need to reduce the stigma of mental illness

2. Men avoid seeking help for mental illnesses

3. Twenty million Indians have mental disorders

4. Understanding mental illness through gene-environment interactions