This conference brings together distinguished mental health professionals with expertise in eating disorders and medical ethicists who focus on psychiatric ethics. The aim is to promote awareness of these issues among practitioners, and to begin a conversation within the field about these difficult but important matters.

Questions to be addressed include:

• When might it make sense to adopt a different, less aggressive, less coercive approach to the care of such patients—an approach focused less on cure and more on quality of life?
• Is there ever a point at which further treatment for an eating disorder can be deemed futile?
• Why is it so difficult to determine decision-making capacity in many of these patients?
• Might there be cases where it is permissible to accept a patient’s treatment refusal even though the patient lacks capacity?
• If we do alter the approach to treatment for some such patients, what should we offer them instead?
• Is there ever a role for palliative care in the treatment of anorexia nervosa?
• How else can we show support and compassion for anorexia patients who refuse life-sustaining treatment?