A recent study identified at least 60 individuals with eating disorders who died by physician-assisted death (PAD), including cases in U.S. states where eligibility is formally restricted to terminal illness. A third were in their teens or twenties, and all were women. This session will examine how legal ambiguities and limited regulatory oversight have facilitated PAD for individuals with severe mental disorders, even in jurisdictions where assisted dying is not permitted for psychiatric illness alone.

The presentation will review emerging data, clinical case reports, and implications for psychiatric practice, medical ethics, and public policy. It will examine the challenges of prognostic accuracy in eating disorders, the reliability of capacity assessments in life-ending decisions, and the difficulty of distinguishing a settled wish to die from suicidality or remediable psychiatric symptoms. 

Speaker

Chelsea Roff

When

Wednesday, May 14
4:00 - 4:30pm BST (11:00 - 11:30am EST)

Where

Royal College of Psychiatrists, 21 Prescot Street, London E1 8BB / Livestream