When people hear the term psychological disorder, they usually think of someone who might have gone crazy or are on the verge of losing their mind. That is not always true however as, some of those diseases are pretty severe and whereas others that are not too harsh. A prime example of this would be the movie A Beautiful Mind where John Nash was having false imaginations of things including agents trying to kill this other person and amongst many other things.
But none of those imaginations were true, he was just imagining them.Later it is revealed that Nash suffers from Schizophrenia. “Schizophrenia is a collection of related psychiatric disorders of unknown etiology that follow a specific pattern of behavior” (Basile 747). This was also seen in the play The Crucible. In this specific play Abigail Williams, one of the main characters, was accusing many people in Salem, Massachusetts of performing witchcraft. Most of her accusations were false; she accused most of the people for solely personal benefit and she created the idea of Mass Hysteria by just imagining things that were not even there.
She also involved other girls in the town to follow her ideas and kept spreading it all the way through the town. Abigail Williams displayed some of the symptoms that a schizophrenic person does such as saying statements that do not make sense, lying for almost everything and every time and imagining things that are not there. Throughout the play it is shown that Abby is suffering from schizophrenia which is forcing her to lie, imagine things and say things that make no type of sense.The play The Crucible is a much known play written by Arthur Miller.
In the play Arthur Miller talks about the famous Salem witchtrails. In 1692 nineteen men and women and two dogs were convicted and hanged for witchcraft in a small village in eastern Massachusetts” (Miller vii). In the play Miller’s main plot revolves around one girl named Abigail Williams who performed witchcraft with other girls. After being caught by her uncle and not face a huge punishment she started accusing all the people in the town for her own personal gain. Because she was in love with John Proctor, she also accused his wife Elizabeth.
After it was exposed that Elizabeth was not involved in witchcraft, a lot of historians said that Elizabeth was released from jail.One of the things they said was “Eighteen years later, she was 578 pounds and 12 shillings in restitution for proctor’s death. ”(Abbotson). After all this occurred Abby knew she had to find a way to get out of this mess. So in order to save herself and the other girls in town she started accusing people. In this statement was the first time she started her accusations.
“Abigail: I saw Goody Hawkins with the devil! ” (Miller 46). After saying this statement, all the accusations started and all the other girls got engaged in it. Throughout the story she just kept lying and kept making up things that were not proper.In the end she knew, she was going to get caught so she just ran away. Arthur Miller’s main point to right this story was to show the people that accusations without evidence are not true. The reason he is trying to get this point across is because he was accused of being communist by Joseph McCarthy, describe his situation with the HUAC and how he dealt with it.
So the best way to get his point across he used Abby as an example. The way Abby’s character was set up, a lot of people thought she might be crazy and may be suffering from a disorder.There are many psychological disorders that people now know about compared to back in the 19th century or earlier. Schizophrenia is now a common disease that shows up in many people.
Schizophrenia changes how a person thinks and sees things. The cause of schizophrenia is unknown, but some doctors do think that it could be genetic and maybe someone in their family had it and didn’t know about it. In the case of Abby, there weren’t many specialized neurologists who could have determined what the disorder was. So no one actually could have determined if she had this disorder even though she had some of the symptoms.
Symptoms usually appear between the ages of 13 and 25, but often appear in males than females. ”(Bellenir 276). They also have a demographic of how many people have the disorder. “Approximately 2. 7 million people have schizophrenia in the United States.
”(Basile 747). When a person suffers from schizophrenia they don’t know if the things around them are real or not. Half of the time they might be hallucinating and become really paranoid. They may be confused with what’s around them and it just makes it hard for them to communicate with others.
There are many types of schizophrenia that a person might be suffering from.Such as, being paranoid, this is when “Person feels extremely suspicious, persecuted, grandiose, or experiences a combination of these emotions. ” (Bellenir 278). Another one is disorganized schizophrenia in which “A person is often incoherent but may not have delusions.
” (Bellenir 278). An additional type of schizophrenia would be Residual Schizophrenia in which “A person is no longer experiencing delusions or hallucination, but has no motivation or interest in life. ”(Bellenir 278). Another type is schizoaffective in which “Person has symptoms of both schizophrenia and major mood disorder like depression. (Bellenir 279).
All of these type symptoms are seen in the character of Abigail. She was depressed in act one when they were questioning her and she killed a chicken and drank its blood. That is pretty crazy and it makes her a sound schizophrenic too. There are positive and negative symptoms to be schizophrenic.
The positive symptoms include delusions. When a person is delusion they just imagine things and do not know what is going around them. Another example would be hallucinations, when a person is hallucinating they just hear voices and tell others what to do.The last positive symptom would be disordered thinking.
In this symptom the person basically just keeps talking and when they do talk it does not make sense. They just keep switching from it. The negative symptoms include social withdraw. This symptom the person just stops talking to the people around them.
Another example would be Lack of interest. In this symptom the person just loses interest in everything and doesn’t have fun at all. The last symptom is speaking little and unresponsiveness. In this symptom the person does not talk and is forced to talk.There is much evidence throughout the essay where Abigail looks like she was suffering through schizophrenia and has some of the symptoms that schizophrenic person might have.
Abby definitely had all the positive symptoms of schizophrenia. The is proven when the girls were in court testifying including Abby and out of nowhere Abby just started to hear voices in the court room, also she thought someone was trying to attack her and she kept saying things that did not even make sense. Also she had some negative symptoms like being unresponsive and speaking little.The prime example of that would be when Proctor was asking her questions and she looked at him but never answered and just stood there. There were many other things that could have made impact on her behavior act like this. For example “she had a terrible childhood, which forced her to live with her uncle” (Martin).
Also she committed adultery with John Proctor, which was terrible thing to do because they were Puritans. “Abigail and Proctor shared an adulterous relation which later serves as a dramatically imperative motive for Abigail’s charges for witchcraft against Elizabeth. ”(Martin).Also she accused people for witchcraft and kept lying on about it for the whole play. There are so many other reasons that prove that she is suffering from schizophrenia and needed help. In today’s modern society and with the huge advancement in technology, there are many treatments offered for people to get help and which could cure their disorder.
One of the types of treatments a person can receive is therapy. “Different forms of therapy, both individual and group, can help both the patient and family members to better understand the illness and share their coping problems. ” (Bellenir 280).Another type would be taking antipsychotic drugs. This drug just helps the person get better and it does not make them feel delusional or get hallucinations. There is also a recovery time for schizophrenia.
The recovery time depends on how the person responds to the drugs and to therapy. Does the therapy or drugs help? Or are they making it worse? These are few of the things that determine how long the recovery time is going to be. In the case of Abby, they didn’t have antipsychotic drugs or therapy that could make you better. So there wasn’t really a cure if a person had a psychological disorder.
They were just considered crazy. Even though the drug makes the person feel better, there is still a chance they might suffer from it again” (Basile 749). “Also there chance over time some might actually be fully recovered” (Basile 749). If Abigail Williams did receive special treatments to cure her disease she might have never done any of these things.
But because she did not receive any help it resulted in her being known as a crazy person and she lost John Proctor while doing all this. Even though she was known as a bad person, what most people do not realize is that she was mentally instable so she could not control what she was doing.
