A doctor believes that sociopaths might be discriminated against in a treatment setting.
There was an interesting House, MD episode titled "Remorse" that highlighted this very issue, in which a doctor really does refuse to treat a patient properly after discovering the patient is a sociopath. The doctor on House instead becomes obsessed with outting the patient as a sociopath. Of course true sociopaths could hide that aspect of their personality from their doctors pretty convincingly in most situations. The tricky balance is being honest enough to get the right treatment for the right symptoms without revealing your identity or otherwise making people very angry at you.
The defiant or untrustworthy patient — the alleged sociopath — suffers a similar fate. Everyone “knows” that sociopaths are liars and manipulators, cannot be trusted and need to be treated with an iron fist. The fact that lying and manipulating exist on a continuum of severity and can at least have semiproductive uses (Congress, are you listening?) is obscured by moral outrage.
And so the doctor’s determination not to lose a contest of wills undermines the opportunity to have successful discussions about treatment. The patient instantly senses that the doctor distrusts and dislikes him, and this, coupled with the patient’s lack of respect toward authority figures, leads to a rapidly deteriorating situation, often ending in a discharge against medical advice — much to the team’s relief.
There was an interesting House, MD episode titled "Remorse" that highlighted this very issue, in which a doctor really does refuse to treat a patient properly after discovering the patient is a sociopath. The doctor on House instead becomes obsessed with outting the patient as a sociopath. Of course true sociopaths could hide that aspect of their personality from their doctors pretty convincingly in most situations. The tricky balance is being honest enough to get the right treatment for the right symptoms without revealing your identity or otherwise making people very angry at you.