From the weight contract to the moral contract A care model for anorexia nervosa in adolescence

This article describes the operation of an interdisciplinary child psychiatry team to support adolescents hospitalised for severe anorexia nervosa. Abandoning the weight contract in favour of a “moral contract”, our care model invites the patient and the medical team to experience an intersubjective hedonistic encounter necessary to overcome illusions and common denials. The reader will see how the team’s positioning, freed from some “constraints” and “restrictions”, allows so-called anorexic adolescents to accept a return to the natural order of things, both safely and pleasurably.