Shine- David Helfgott

Shine follows the story of David Helfgott who suffers from schizophrenia. as the movie progressed we can see that David started off as a healthy young boy but as he grow older his ticks start to become more apparent until it became full blown after fainting on stage. Looking at the DSM-IV criteria of schizophrenia we can start to determine where in the spectrum David lays. From the characteristic symptoms we can gather that he has disorganized speech as many of the times he brings up moments from the past that are irrelevant to the situation, not to mention the speed at which he dished out his close to incoherent babbles. The second characteristic symptom, which is required to make a diagnosis, is David’s disorganized which can be seen by the state of the house when he is left alone. From the next criteria, social/occupational dysfunction, David varies as he appears to be a savant as he has profound musical skills with the piano which in turn have led to his occupation and on the other side we can see that he is even quite social as he continuously makes an effort to meet new people, but help is also required to help him in other social situation as he also has the tendency to get naked in public.  Looking at the duration we can see that this is lifelong for David as he will never be the same as he was before the incident. Taking a closer look at the type of schizophrenia we can see that his symptoms are most similar to those who suffer from disorganized type, as he suffers from disorganized speech and behaviour as well as inappropriate affect. Regardless of his disorder, David still seems to have a large effect on his family as well as society as he continued to play piano for thousands of people.

David Helfgott