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Treatment Refusal in Anorexia Nervosa: The Hardest of Cases

Commentary on “Anorexia Nervosa: The Diagnosis: A Postmodern Ethics Contribution to the Bioethics Debate on Involuntary Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa” by Sacha Kendall

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The Original Article was published on 24 December 2013

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Notes

  1. The absence of this weighing arm will usually be clear in cases where patients are so cachectic that they have become delirious. As Kendall notes, though, in other cases, where the patient’s determination to reduce his or her calorific intake is the factor adjudged to be impacting on the patient’s decision-making capacity, a finding of incapacity will be much more controversial.

  2. Australian courts have tended not to adopt this view of life’s sanctity (Hunter and New England Area Health Service v A [2009] NSWSC 761, [9]) but nonetheless accept that, where capacity is in doubt, that doubt is to be resolved in favour of the preservation of life.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Discipline of Psychiatry and the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher James Ryan

  2. Department of Psychiatry, Westmead Hospital, Westmead, NSW, 2145, Australia

    Christopher James Ryan

  3. Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

    Sascha Callaghan

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  1. Christopher James Ryan
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  2. Sascha Callaghan
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Correspondence to Christopher James Ryan.

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Ryan, C.J., Callaghan, S. Treatment Refusal in Anorexia Nervosa: The Hardest of Cases. Bioethical Inquiry 11, 43–45 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9498-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-013-9498-8

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