‘Assisted dying’ for reasons solely related to an eating disorder (ED) has occurred in multiple countries, including those which restrict the practice to individuals with a terminal condition.

That’s according to a new systematic review published in the interdisciplinary journal Frontiers in Psychiatry.

The aims of the review were to identify all known cases of assisted suicide among patients with EDs and to describe the clinical rationales used to grant patients’ requests for assisted suicide.

The study identified at least 60 cases of women in US, Netherlands and Belgium who availed of assisted suicide because they suffered with anorexia. Most were young women.

Reports emphasised that patients with EDs who underwent assisted suicide were not necessarily terminally ill.

However, most government reports did not include descriptive-enough data to verify psychiatric conditions.