The Apathetic Children

March 28, 2017 8:14 AM

Uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome, is said to exist only in Sweden, and only among refugees. The patients have no underlying physical or neurological disease, but they seem to have lost the will to live. The Swedish refer to them as de apatiska, the apathetic. “I think it is a form of protection, this coma they are in,” Hultcrantz said. “They are like Snow White. They just fall away from the world.” [Rachel Aviv, The New Yorker]
posted by neroli (17 comments total)

In December, 2015, the Migration Board rejected their final appeal, and, in a letter, told the family, “You must leave Sweden.” Their deportation to Russia was scheduled for April. Soslan said that to his children Russia “might as well be the moon.” Georgi read the letter silently, dropped it on the floor, went upstairs to his room, and lay down on the bed.

In late May, 2016, Georgi’s family received another letter from the Migration Board. Their neighbor Ellina Zapolskaia translated it. “The Migration Board finds no reason to question what is stated about Georgi’s health,” she read out loud. “He is therefore considered to be in need of a safe and stable environment and living conditions in order to recuperate.” The family was granted permanent residence in Sweden.

huh.
posted by leotrotsky at 10:04 AM on March 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm a generation older than these kids, and developed anxiety disorder starting about the same age, so this feels to me like the next step -- as if in the 21st century, mere anxiety is not enough. I hope not, though, because that implies it will eventually spread beyond its peculiarly Swedish locus. That's just about the last thing the world needs now,
posted by Quindar Beep at 10:06 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

A generation ago, Hmong refugee community in this country experienced a rash of unexplained nighttime deaths. I had sponsored a family from a related community, the Mien, who were equally unprepared for life in the US, and was working in the refugee field at that point. To the best of my knowledge, no one has fully explained the cause.
posted by etaoin at 10:19 AM on March 28, 2017 [8 favorites]

The article mentions deaths of the refugees from Laos, as well as Cambodian refugees in California losing the ability to see. The article is really intense and I found it terrifying - thank you for posting, I'm glad to have read it.
posted by insectosaurus at 10:27 AM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

I found this quote interesting in relation to this syndrome and others around the world: "Every culture possesses what Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto, calls a “ ‘symptom repertoire’—a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict.” I also think there's some strategic self-will going on with these kids, who were probably aware that other refugees families were saved from being deported by this syndome. All the same, it's still a tragic problem and I figure it's hard to treat these syndromes in that although likely partly self-willed/partly psychological reaction, the illness or symptoms do become real. I experienced something like this when I was young - though hardly on the scale of what this article describes. I was sent to a camp that was horribly run and because of that rather scary and stressful. One of our fellow scouts became ill and her parents came and picked her up. Many of the rest of us were jealous so we began faking symptoms (headaches, weakness etc). Within a few days, the camp had to close down. The thing is though I had begun by faking these symptoms, within a day, they were real. I had a continual headache, was dizzy, weak and nauseous. And after getting home, it took me 3 to 4 days to recover.
posted by SA456 at 11:03 AM on March 28, 2017 [11 favorites]

Really interesting article. I honestly expect to see more stories like this as the refugee crises worsen around the world. I wonder if part of the reason that it's only happening in Sweden so far is that subconsciously these kids know that their bodies will be taken care of by the government - I doubt that would be the case in, say, Sudan. Much to ponder here - thank you for posting, neroli.
posted by widdershins at 11:13 AM on March 28, 2017 [4 favorites]

This reminds me of nothing so much as a 21st century version of the "North African Syndrome" diagnosed among colonized peoples by the Martiniquan psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon.
posted by demonic winged headgear at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2017 [5 favorites]

god this feels like my life lately, all I've been wanting to do is sleep, except there's nobody to take care of me if I do. i keep having these fantasies of just... sleeping. no dealing with the endless crisis of the trump regime. no trying to keep my solar-powered self going in cloudy winter seattle. just... sleep.

i mean i don't want to trivialize their greater problems, they have a lot of chaos going on i don't, but i just keep on fantasizing of being a dragon princess asleep in a magically-preserved castle for who knows how long.
posted by egypturnash at 12:22 PM on March 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

hm.

in the early 90's when I was in middle school health class we had to watch some movie (about bullying? child abuse?) and the only thing I remember about it was there was a kid that asked his bus driver to stop so he could get off. As soon as he stepped off the bus, he collapsed and died; there was an explanation about how he "just gave up" or something.

This is literally all I remember about this and have been wondering about it off and on over the years. At least this points to me not just making it up entirely?
posted by ArgentCorvid at 12:51 PM on March 28, 2017

Wonder why they don't call it catatonic depression.
posted by serena15221 at 1:13 PM on March 28, 2017 [9 favorites]

ArgentCorvid: Cipher in the Snow? I watched it as part of my LDS upbringing, BYU made it.
posted by foxfirefey at 2:31 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

Wonder why they don't call it catatonic depression.

It does seem a bit exoticizing, although on the other hand this does seem to be a culturally-specific phenomenon.

I also wonder, as was noted in the article, if this is a Sweden thing or if it just hasn't been documented well enough elsewhere, and maybe not only with refugees. We don't pay enough attention to trauma, particularly trauma that affects entire communities.
posted by tivalasvegas at 2:36 PM on March 28, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh God. I also don't want to trivialise their experiences and I recognise my position of privilege, but I've been very close to there. The lack of security because of visas leading to psychological horror. In my case it led me inches away from suicide attempts, though there have been days where I just didn't eat or do much and just stayed in bed because I just couldn't deal anymore. Not as bad as these kids, maybe because I tried to find ways out, but this is crushingly familiar.
posted by divabat at 2:47 PM on March 28, 2017 [8 favorites]

This looks a lot like very severe, early onset learned helplessness. Man, I feel for these kids! Messing with people's lives and families when they're young stays with them their whole lives. These poor kids!
posted by saulgoodman at 4:54 PM on March 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

I wonder, could this be an expression of learned helplessness? Or is this a different thing?
posted by Merus at 8:00 PM on March 28, 2017

Learned helplessness and catatonic depression aren't behaviors that are endemic within a certain group, though. This is a behavior that's manifesting itself within a specific portion of the population, not widely. Otherwise, kids in the US whose parents face eviction might express the same behaviors.

The article really did not do a good job of de-exoticizing culturally bound symptoms-- anorexia (IIRC) is arguably isolated to Western culture, and I suspect the angry young men going postal is very much a US phenomenon.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 11:26 PM on March 28, 2017 [2 favorites]

foxfirefey: That has to be it, although the summary really didn't bring up anything else.

Context of my watching it was (as I said) in health class in a public middle school in rural Minnesota. so probably no LDS angle there.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:37 AM on March 29, 2017