Refugee children in Sweden are falling into coma-like states on learning their families will be depo

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Independent

Refugee children in Sweden are falling into coma-like states on learning their families will be deported
Resignation syndrome, or uppgivenhetssyndrom, has been diagnosed in 60 children this year

Will Worley @willrworley 6 hours ago





Authorities in Sweden are attempting to solve a problem that appears unique to its child refugees - uppgivenhetssyndrom or "resignation syndrome".

The condition causes healthy youngsters to deteriorate into a comatose-like state after learning of their impending deportation,

It is believed to only exist among the refugee population in the Scandinavian country, where it has been prevalent since the early part of this century.

In 2016, 60 children were diagnosed with the syndrome, which sees patients are rendered “totally passive, immobile, lacks tonus, withdrawn, mute, unable to eat and drink, incontinent and not reacting to physical stimuli or pain,” according to medical journal Acta Pædiatrica.


Read more: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-children-sweden-coma-like-states-families-deported-uppgivenhetssyndrom-resignation-syndrome-a7662126.html

[JI7]

2. maybe combined with the weather ?

Are they less likely to go out and meet others ? So there is less support for them ?

[mpcamb]

14. They're getting more sun than we are currently, unless you're in Alaska.

[mrs_p]

3. RW idea of April Fools joke?

I'm perplexed.

ETA. Another source for this story http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/03/30/521958505/only-in-sweden-hundreds-of-refugee-children-gave-up-on-life

I'm looking up the primary literature on this one as nothing comes up for this syndrome on Dr. Google.

[mrs_p]

5. It's been described since the mid 2000s

Super sad.

Pubmed search for upgivenhetssyndrome:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/16535880/

[Judi Lynn]

6. Thank you, mrs_p. n/t

[mrs_p]

7. I study diseases

and I had never heard of this before and I can't read Swedish to figure out the disease process.

ETA. Here is an article with more information on this syndrome: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00007/full

This is heart breaking.

[Warpy]

10. It's also been documented among adults in concentration camps in WWII

in both Europe and the Far East. They'd just lie down and give up and be dead in a few days with no observable disease process.

This is not a new phenomenon. It's just the first time it's been documented in large numbers of children.

[luvMIdog]

4. poor little things so sad

[radical noodle]

8. The New Yorker had a good article about it recently

I posted it the other night. It gives a higher number of children affected.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1016182392

[KT2000]

9. a broken psyche

part giving up and part surviving. One boy who came out of it remembered the experience as being in a glass box under water. He was fearful the sides of the box would shatter.

These kids live through years of denial of their parents' applications for permanent status. They internalize that stress and when the time comes for them to be deported to a country they have never known they give up on living but their young healthy minds are still programmed for survival. The new Yorker article said there are more than 400 children this has affected.

The New Yorker article cited the cases of Laos women refugees to the US who would scream in the middle of the night and then die. It is not uncommon for people and animals to die of a "broken heart."

Fascinating article and a reminder that there are real human consequences to political actions.

[AC_Mem]

11. I was thinking it was a broken or even departed soul

How we hurt the poor children... It is the greatest sin of all.

[KittyWampus]

12. Cambodians' Vision Loss Linked to War Trauma

After a while, people's bodies are screaming NO MORE!

Scores of Cambodians complain they are blind or suffer blurry vision although their eyes are normal--a malady some experts blame on the horrors they witnessed in the killing fields of their native land.

"These women saw things that their minds just could not accept," said psychology professor Patricia Rozee-Koker of Cal State Long Beach, who studies vision complaints of the Khmer Rouge regime's refugees.

"Seventy percent of the women had their immediate family killed before their eyes," she said. "So their minds simply closed down, and they refused to see anymore--refused to see any more death, any more torture, any more rape, any more starvation."

The majority of the refugees with vision complaints are 40- to 70-year-old women who fled the Khmer Rouge regime, which was toppled a decade ago.

Experts believe that the refugees suffer hysterical, psychosomatic or functional blindness, in which psychological turmoil spurs people with normal eyes to believe that they are blind or see poorly.



http://articles.latimes.com/1989-10-15/news/mn-232_1_vision-loss

[klook]

13. Read about this in The New Yorker

Absolutely devastating and heartbreaking.