Resignation syndrome: Sweden's mystery illness - BBC News - 0 views
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Resignation syndrome: Sweden's mystery illness
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Resignation Syndrome, it affects only the children of asylum-seekers, who withdraw completely, ceasing to walk or talk, or open their eyes. Eventually they recover.
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When her father picks her up from her wheelchair, nine-year-old Sophie is lifeless. In contrast, her hair is thick and shiny - like a healthy child's. But Sophie's eyes are closed. And under her tracksuit bottoms she wears a nappy. A transparent feeding tube runs into Sophie's nose - this is how she has been nourished for the past 20 months.
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The health professionals who treat these children agree that trauma is what has caused them to withdraw from the world. The children who are most vulnerable are those who have witnessed extreme violence - often against their parents - or whose families have fled a deeply insecure environment.
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Resignation Syndrome was first reported in Sweden in the late 1990s. More than 400 cases were reported in the two years from 2003-2005.
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It remains the case that children from particular geographical and ethnic groups are the most vulnerable: those from the former USSR, the Balkans, Roma children, and most recently the Yazidi.
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Numerous conditions resembling Resignation Syndrome have been reported before - among Nazi concentration camp inmates, for example. In the UK, a similar condition - Pervasive Refusal Syndrome - was identified in children in the early 1990s, but there have been only a tiny handful of cases, and none of them among asylum seekers.