Question: Which mental disorder do you find the hardest to treat? Do you receive much resistance when treating your patients?

John Atkinson answered on 18 Jun 2018:

Hi Fergus, interesting question!
It is very hard to treat chronic mental illnesses such as schizophrenia where the person is so unwell they are very out of touch with reality. When this happens, it is sometimes about just considering their quality of life and trying to make this the best we can by providing them with positive activities etc.
Treating someone with a severe personality disorder can also be very hard too as they can often be very challenging to you and resistant to change because of lack of trust due to the abuse they have suffered in their lives (they might expect everyone is against them). In these cases, you have to build the relationship very slowly and show that you want to help them.
If the person is very resistant, it can take a long time to help them and it is often not worth investing in serious treatment if they are like that as there is no benefit until they start to get some sort of motivation. It is very much a question of timing sometimes.