Quelle place pour les soins palliatifs dans l'évolution des troubles de la conduite alimentaire ?

As doctors working in a twelve-bed unit, tending to patients suffering from anorexia and bulimia in complete, long-term hospitalization, we were solicited by colleagues from palliative care units to tackle the question of the possible status of palliative care during the course of severe eating disorders treatment, on a meeting organized by the regional coordination. This text is inspired from the richness of the ensuing debates, and presents the thoughts of doctors, psychologists and nurses on the matter. They draw the common conclusion, that the nursing staff must not regard a patient refusing to feed as a will to death, and as such, as a refusal of one's care. One must thus rethink the latter to offer a more individual and comforting approach that will allow the patient to escape this ambivalence, without risking of dragging the nursing staff into it.