Schizophrenia is a well known emotional and mental disorder that causes hallucinations, paranoid and delusional behaviour. In contrary to many other diseases, schizophrenia is mostly affected and caused by external environment. People that are suffering from this disorder usually cannot differentiate their imaginative world from the real one. Schizophrenia is very often a result of stress and develops gradually. It is therefore, very important to start early treatment of the disease. A lot of literature gave attention and analysed this disorder, contributing great and extremely interesting data on causes, diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia. Due to its nature, this illness received a lot of reflection in the movies and the main reasons why I have chosen this topic for my research is the attention it received in non-scientific literature and cinematography. One of good examples of the movies that raise the question of schizophrenia is “A Beautiful Mind”.
In this research paper I would like to raise some of the ethical issues, related to the propaganda of mental diseases and schizophrenia in cinematography. In the scale of this research I would like to analyse possible negative effects of exploitation of the topic in mass media and movies and receive the reaction of the population in this respect. People, suffering from schizophrenia, are very sensitive to the destruction of their imaginative reality. Any intervention in their comfort zone can cause further complications.
As a result of this research, we expect to get detailed analysis and multi-angle view on the “commercialization” of schizophrenia in the cinematography and drive specific conclusions for further academic and practical reference. We do not target to drive “yes” or “no” conclusion, neither do we…