John Nash, Nobel prize winning mathematician and subject of the Oscar winning biographic movie "A Beautiful Mind", delivered a speech to the American Psychiatric Association's annual conference. He suggests that schizophrenia represents just one facet of the diversity created by evolutionary development of human beings.

Mind Hacks

In his talk, he suggested that mental illness may be the result of the otherwise healthy evolution of mental diversity. Applying his specialized understanding of "game theory" to an analysis of mental illness and his own experience with psychosis, the 79-year-old Nobel Laureate suggested that severe mental illness exists in nature as a consequence of the diversification of species, and that it may serve the needs of adaptation by its not infrequent association with genius.