MYSTERIOUS MALADIES

Nola lay in her bed, eyes closed, her face serene but pale, when London consultant neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan was called in to assess her. Others went in and out of her room, the family dog nudging her hand, but the 10-year-old remained utterly unresponsive. Her older sister, Helan, lay in bed, too, though her eyes opened from time to time.

Nola had seemingly fallen into an unending “sleeping beauty” trance, needing to be fed by intubation, when her family, Yazidi refugees from Syria, were refused asylum to remain in Sweden. No one knew why, and O’Sullivan, who specialises in complex epilepsy and psychosomatic – often called psychogenic or functional – conditions, longed to find out. For Nola and Helan are among nearly 200 children to lapse into these unexplained coma-like states in recent years in Sweden, cases that came to be known as resignation syndrome or uppgivenhetssyndrom. All were asylum-seekers’ children.

First noticed in the late 1990s, the syndrome began with anxiety and depression, with the unresponsive sleep stage lasting between months and years. The children’s CAT scans, blood tests, brainwave recordings and lumbar punctures came back normal, yet some, such as Nola, appeared to be in a state of arousal when examined.

Their common factor was persecution and flight from troubled circumstances in their homelands from the former USSR, the Balkans, Iraq, Syria and Roma and Uyghur areas. Most of the children had become integrated into Sweden and spoke the language. Most fell ill when their family’s application for asylum was rejected.

If a family gained residency, their children usually