THE SAFE COCOON OF CATATONIA By
Meagan Johnson Teresa Nam
Nine-year-old Sophie fled the USSR with her family about six years ago. After her parents were raped, kidnapped, and subsequently beaten by a Russian mafia, Sophie's parents decided to seek asylum in Sweden. Months after making the 3,000-mile move to Sweden, their dream of safety and freedom was quickly bulldozed-the Swedish Migration Board failed to see why Sophie and her family deserved to remain in the country. Immediately after receiving the devastating news, Sophie succumbed to a mysterious illness: a comatose-like state without any apparent biological or medical
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reason. This illness would soon be diagnosed as Uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome. Lying prone, being fed through a tube, and wholly detached from their adolescent worlds seems like a rare phenomenon for a child as young as nine. However, Sophie's story is just one of a few hundred. Uppgivenhetssyndrom—unlike cancer or ischemic heart conditions---fails to transverse borders as every case lies in Sweden. First identified in the late 1990s, researchers coined "Uppgivenhetssydrom" as a long-standing disorder plaguing psychologically traumatized migrant children
amid a lengthy migration process. Symptoms included gradual withdrawal from the world around them: a profoundly depressive state. This stupor soon prompts paralysis, a lack of speech, and a failure to respond to any stimuli. After months or even years of being in a coma, remission is marked by a return to normal functioning. The child, without any signs of brain damage, wakes up as if they took a nap. Although symptoms resembling Uppgivenhetssydrom can be found in the medical literature (a similar phenomenon was observed in Nazi concentration camps), no hypoth-
