The Soloist, being inspired by a real-life story, was directed by Joe Wright and was released in the year of 2009. It also won the Prism Award for Feature Film under the Mental Health category.
The film commences with one of the main characters, Steve Lopez, a journalist for the Los Angeles Times who is working for his recently divorced ex-wife. While Lopez is recovering from a bike accident, the distant, beautiful harmonies released through the strings of a violin capture his attention. Out of morbid curiosity, he seeks to find out the talented violinist who introduces him to a homeless man, Nathaniel Ayers. Nathaniel Ayers is a musician who dropped out of a prestigious school, Juilliard, and lives on the streets. From a talented, well-settled musician, Ayers was pulled down to a homeless man due to a severe mental disorder - Schizophrenia.
Steve Lopez learns that Ayers was a child prodigy with the instrument of the cello and performed magnificently. However, his journey towards reaching heights in the music industry with the cello was shattered when he started showing symptoms of schizophrenia at Juilliard. He was attacked by auditory hallucinations and dropped out of Juilliard. Furthermore, he was filled with the paranoia that his sister would murder him and moved to the streets to save himself.
Lopez decides to rehabilitate him through music therapy under the guidance of the cellist Graham. After realizing the positive effects Ayer’s friendship had in his life, Lopez helps Ayer’s sister to meet Ayers and makes amends with him as well. The film comes to an end, showing Ayers living with schizophrenia but coping due to music, friendship, and belief in self. He is still struggling with auditory hallucinations, paranoia, and delusions, but he is making a conscious effort to make his life better with the internal and external resources that help his mental health.
This film does not fail to accurately depict the complexity of the symptoms that any schizophrenia patient has to face. The film showed the onset and progress of schizophrenia in a very accurate manner through the life stages of the main character ‘Nathaniel Ayers. It also shows the benefits of music therapy, social support, and mental health awareness that can play a significant role in the treatment of any mentally ill patient.
We will further look into the detailed analysis of the symptoms of schizophrenia through Nathaniel Ayers’ life.
Analysis of Symptomology
The symptoms of schizophrenia range from cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems. There are categorically two types of symptoms in schizophrenia - positive symptoms and negative symptoms.
Firstly, positive symptoms involve the excessiveness or distortion of any normal functioning that occurs in an individual, such as:
Hallucinations
An inaccurate sensory perception that seems to be real, although there is no presence of external stimulus (APA, 2023). The types of hallucinations can be auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, presence, and proprioceptive hallucinations.
Nathaniel Ayers starts depicting auditory hallucinations at Juilliard. As he attends dinner, he is subjected to multiple voices with different contexts and genders. The voices made remarks about his skills as a musician and worth as a person. The consistent torture caused by the voices enables him to scream and sob in pain. That further leads to:
Delusions
A delusional is a false belief that is in contrast with reality, which depicts the disorganized content of thought of the respective individual (Chaudhury & Kiran, 2009). The types of delusions that play a role in schizophrenia are Delusions of control, erotomania, persecution, grandeur, and reference.
In this film, it can be seen that the delusion of persecution is a major symptom of Nathaniel Ayers. He believes that his sister is poisoning his food to kill him. This enables him to decide to move out of his sister’s house to save his life. He also thought that Juilliard was working against him and accounted for his worsening state of well-being. Furthermore, he was also very paranoid about his neighbours stealing his belongings.
Nathaniel does not show any signs of insight well. Hence, he refuses to take the treatment and medication that Steve Lopez tries to use to rehabilitate him. He is too paranoid to accept any treatment and does not have sufficient insight to differentiate between his delusions and reality.
Secondly, the negative symptoms of schizophrenia refer to the decrease or absence of normal functioning related to motivation, emotional expression, and speech (Correll & Schooler, 2020). The negative symptom observed in Nathaniel Ayers is:
Disorganized Behavior and Speech
Schizophrenia patients show signs of inability to organize their ideas and communication. They tend to express themselves through inconsistent, irrelevant, and illogical ways of speech. They also may depict odd behavior, such as laughing or talking to oneself or responding to internally created stimuli. They may show inappropriate emotional responses incongruent with the context (Sandy, 2013).
Nathaniel Ayers shows this symptom to a great extent throughout the film. Ayers reveals a great range of characteristics caused by this symptom while he confides in his friend Steve Lopez about his condition. In terms of disorganized speech, Ayers spoke in a flat vocal tone with little expression. He was inconsistent in his flow of speech and shifted topics while talking. He conclusively dealt with the poverty of speech, cognition blocks, and tangentiality as well.
In terms of disorganized behavior, excessive sobbing can be seen when Ayers’ career fails at Juilliard. Also, his excessive anger is observed when he attacks Lopez for giving him treatment or when he attacks Graham, his music teacher.
Conclusion
This film not only brought a more accurate understanding of the severe mental disorder - schizophrenia but also taught the audience the valuable concept of mental health awareness. The various symptoms of schizophrenia, the development of the disorder in Nathaniel Ayers as he grows up, and the intervention and treatment given by Steve Lopez walk us through every stage of a mental health disorder.
This film has softened the difficulty in treating schizophrenia and has given a new and hopeful perspective to treating mental health disorders. It promotes the usage of music and other expressive therapies.
References
APA . (2023). Psychiatry.org. https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/schizophrenia/what-is-schizophrenia
Correll, C. U., & Schooler, N. R. (2020). Negative Symptoms in Schizophrenia: A Review and Clinical Guide for Recognition, Assessment, and Treatment. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, Volume 16, 519–534. https://doi.org/10.2147/ndt.s225643
Kiran, C., & Chaudhury, S. (2009). Understanding delusions. Industrial Psychiatry Journal, 18(1), 3–3. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-6748.57851
Sandy. (2013). Disorganized symptoms. NeuRA Library. https://library.neura.edu.au/schizophrenia/signs-and-symptoms/general-signs-and-symptoms/disorganised-symptoms/#:~:text=Disorganised%20behaviour%20includes%20bizarre%20or,responses%20for%20a%20given%20context.
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