Is there a term for when an illness itself prevents the patient from obtaining a cure?
A challenge to curing patients is that sometimes the illness itself prevents a patient from taking a cure.
Some examples:
- Depression - lack of motivation and negative thinking prevent the patient from seeking help or carrying out their treatment.
- Dementia - the patient may forget to carry out their treatment.
- Anorexia/Paranoid Schizophrenia - part of the illness includes the belief that they are not ill and possibly even that doctors are working against them.
- Any illness where the patient is too physically incapacitated to contact a doctor or carry out their treatment.
Is there a term for this problem?
Solution 1:
Perhaps they are trapped in a cycle of decline.
But provided their condition is curable it is the job of a good doctor to get them out of it.
Solution 2:
I'm not sure how well this fits your context of patients and treatments, but consider:
Vicious circle — TFD
A situation in which the apparent solution of one problem in a chain of circumstances creates a new problem and increases the difficulty of solving the original problem.
A condition in which a disorder or disease gives rise to another that subsequently affects the first.
Vicious cycle — TFD
one trouble leads to another that aggravates the first
Self-fulfilling prophecy — Business Dictionary
Any positive or negative expectation about circumstances, events, or people that may affect a person's behavior toward them in a manner that causes those expectations to be fulfilled.
An employer who, for example, expects the employees to be disloyal and shirkers, will likely treat them in a way that will elicit the very response he or she expects.
Solution 3:
I'd suggest self-perpetuating.
having a system that prevents change and produces new things that are very similar to the old ones