This may simply be due to training that does not prepare the clinician to deal with schizophrenia and other disorders. Inadequately trained people might be scared by symptoms that they are not familiar with, or have not been taught to expect, and have not been given enough help with how to treat such people. When a person is scared, they sometimes do or say things that imply that the patient is at fault, or to be avoided. Or if the clinician has received training that emphasizes only medication as treatment options, some will insist on that, even when it does not work.

Even with inadequate knowledge, a clinician could be trained to try to work with the patient, assuming that his or her symptoms do make some sense, and to collaborate with the patient in the search for that meaning. Personally, I don't think any of the medications I was given did me more than a slight amount of good, and some made things worse. The only thing that has helped me is reading about some of the non-medicine approaches which emphasize compassionate self-examination -- and applying them. It is not an easy thing to do, and I have found that these methods take a lot of repeated practice. Very frustrating at times, but also quite rewarding.

Maybe we are all pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps, learning what really works and what does not. In this, we patients or clients or whatever may have to take on the burden of educating the "professionals" in many ways. Not something I really want to do, but do we have a choice?