Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined

A recent article (JED 10:23, 2022) proposed defining terminal anorexia to improve access to palliative and hospice care, and to medical aid in dying for a minority of patients with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN). The authors presented three cases and, for two, the first author particip...

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Autores principales: Guarda, Angela S., Hanson, Annette, Mehler, Philip, Westmoreland, Patricia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Correspondence
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9175496/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35672780
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-022-00599-6
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author Guarda, Angela S.
Hanson, Annette
Mehler, Philip
Westmoreland, Patricia
author_facet Guarda, Angela S.
Hanson, Annette
Mehler, Philip
Westmoreland, Patricia
author_sort Guarda, Angela S.
collection PubMed
description A recent article (JED 10:23, 2022) proposed defining terminal anorexia to improve access to palliative and hospice care, and to medical aid in dying for a minority of patients with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN). The authors presented three cases and, for two, the first author participated in their death. Anorexia nervosa is a treatable psychiatric condition for which recovery may be uncertain. We are greatly concerned however regarding implications of applying the label “terminal” to anorexia nervosa and the risk it will lead to unjustified deaths in individuals whose mental illness impairs their capacity to make a reasoned treatment decision.
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spelling pubmed-91754962022-06-09 Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined Guarda, Angela S. Hanson, Annette Mehler, Philip Westmoreland, Patricia J Eat Disord Correspondence A recent article (JED 10:23, 2022) proposed defining terminal anorexia to improve access to palliative and hospice care, and to medical aid in dying for a minority of patients with severe and enduring anorexia nervosa (SE-AN). The authors presented three cases and, for two, the first author participated in their death. Anorexia nervosa is a treatable psychiatric condition for which recovery may be uncertain. We are greatly concerned however regarding implications of applying the label “terminal” to anorexia nervosa and the risk it will lead to unjustified deaths in individuals whose mental illness impairs their capacity to make a reasoned treatment decision. BioMed Central 2022-06-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9175496/ /pubmed/35672780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-022-00599-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Correspondence
Guarda, Angela S.
Hanson, Annette
Mehler, Philip
Westmoreland, Patricia
Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title_full Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title_fullStr Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title_full_unstemmed Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title_short Terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
title_sort terminal anorexia nervosa is a dangerous term: it cannot, and should not, be defined
topic Correspondence
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9175496/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35672780
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s40337-022-00599-6
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