MEDICAL BAG

RESIGNATION SYNDROME

For 20 years, Sweden has been dealing with a mysterious illness, mostly affecting children, and exclusively found in families of asylum seekers. Sufferers start by withdrawing from society, becoming more and more apathetic until they cease to interact with the world at all and decline into a coma, totally unresponsive to any external stimuli and only kept alive by feeding tubes. All tests, though, indicate that sufferers’ brains are awake and that they are suffering from no physical disorders, but nonetheless they remain comatose. This is extremely unusual – comas as deep as those experienced by people with resignation syndrome are usually the result of brain damage or other abnormality.