Anorexia nervosa is often chronic, with one of the highest death rates for psychological conditions. Law can compel treatment, but is rarely invoked, at least formally (though the strategic possibilities of orders confers internal authority within the clinical setting). Instead, 'control' (or management) is exercised diffusely, through disciplinary practices embedded in everyday clinic life, such as daily routines of eating and washing, behavioural 'contracts', regular surveillance and measuring, interactions with staff, visits and activities.
Typically anorexia nervosa is diagnosed as a condition of teenage girls where the rates of mortality and morbidity are very high and recovery rates very low. This chapter discusses the condition as experienced in Australia by older women who have either lived with anorexia during adolescence and as young women or who have been diagnosed later in life. The discussion traverses issues of consent to treatment or its refusal, capacity to provide consent, and the application of human right protections arising from various human rights instruments.