Chelsea Roff is founder of Eat, Breathe Thrive, an international eating disorder charity. She co-authored the first systematic review of deaths by euthanasia and assisted suicide in people with eating disorders, describing 60 cases internationally. Suicide is a leading cause of death in eating disorders, leading to complex ethical and clinical challenges when NHS resources are limited. ‘One of the heart-breaking things about this illness is the more severe it becomes the more a person resists treatment – resists the very thing that is going to bring them out of it’. Assisted suicide legislation may only be intended for a small group patients but eating disorders demonstrate why ‘the repercussions are across the bows of medicine’.

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