Can I force my child to get medical treatment if I'm worried about anorexia?

Can I force my child to get medical treatment if I'm worried about anorexia?

Yes, think about it this way; if your son had an ear infection, are you not going to force them to take that penicillin that they need to take? So for somebody with anorexia, their medicine is food and their medicine is also treatment. So yes you can force them to get treatment even though, I would say at our clinic, probably half of the adolescents we see at my clinic do not want treatment. They typically with an adolescent there's resistance. So they don't want treatment but I tell parents that if your child had a fever, would you say “oh honey, do you think you want to take some Panadol today or do you think you want to wait until tomorrow?” If you child had a fever, you would give them that medicine right away. So if they have anorexia, they need to be in treatment right away. Clearly.