Why These Children Fell into Endless Sleep

Suzanne O’Sullivan in Nautilus:

People who have psychologically mediated physical symptoms always fear being accused of feigning illness. I knew that one of the reasons Dr. Olssen was desperate for me to provide a brain-related explanation for the children’s condition was to help them escape such an accusation. She also knew that a brain disorder had a better chance of being respected than a psychological disorder. To refer to resignation syndrome as stress induced would lessen the seriousness of the children’s condition in people’s minds. It is the way of the world that the length of time a person spends as sick, immobile, and unresponsive is less impressive if it doesn’t come with a corresponding change on a brain scan.

Not all the medical interest in this disorder has focused on blood tests and brain scans. More psychologically minded explanations have compared resignation syndrome to pervasive refusal syndrome (also called pervasive arousal withdrawal syndrome—PAWS), a psychiatric disorder of children and teens in which they resolutely refuse to eat, talk, walk, or engage with their surroundings. The cause is unknown, but PAWS has been linked to stress and trauma. The withdrawal in PAWS is an active one, as the word “refusal” suggests; it is not apathetic. Still, as a condition associated with hopelessness, it does seem to have more in common with resignation syndrome than other suggestions.

The resignation-syndrome children became ill while living in Sweden, but most had experienced trauma in their country of birth. It seems likely, then, that this past trauma would play a significant role in the illness. Perhaps it is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder? Or could the ordeals suffered by the parents have affected their ability to parent, which in turn impacted on the emotional development of the child? One psychodynamically minded theory is that the traumatized mothers are projecting their fatalistic anguish onto their children, in what one doctor described as an act of “lethal mothering.”

There is clearly much of value in investigating the biological and psychological explanations for resignation syndrome, but even when taken together they fall short. Psychological explanations focus too much on the stressor and on the mental state of the individual affected, without adequately paying attention to the bigger picture. They also come with the inevitable need to apportion blame, passing judgement on the child and the child’s family. They risk diminishing the family’s plight in the eyes of others. Psychological distress simply doesn’t elicit the same urgent need for help that physical suffering does.

More here.