WHAT ARE DE APATISKA?
- A group of refugee children living in Sweden have begun to exhibit signs of a unique condition, called uppgivenhetssyndrom. When they learn that they may have to return to their homeland and leave Sweden, they enter a sort of coma, the only cure for which seems to be granting them permanent asylum. These children are collectively known as de apatiska, or "the apathetic."
- The condition only exists in Sweden, and only among refugee children.
- In an article for The New Yorker, Rachel Aviv outlines the background and current situation of de apatiska, their condition of uppgivenhetssyndrom (which Elias wants to combat through music in our show), and how they may fin relief through trygghet. You can find the full article here, or download it as a PDF by clicking on the button below.
- Below are highlights from the article, which traces the journey of Georgi, a young Russian boy living in Sweden who developed trygghet. I have also bolded selections which feel most important.
- "Georgi was given a diagnosis of uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome, an illness that is said to exist only in Sweden, and only among refugees. The patients have no underlying physical or neurological disease, but they seem to have lost the will to live. The Swedish refer to them as de apatiska, the apathetic. 'I think it is a form of protection, this coma they are in,' Hultcrantz said. 'They are like Snow White. They just fall away from the world.'”
- "By 2005, more than four hundred children, most between the ages of eight and fifteen, had fallen into the condition. In the medical journal Acta Pædiatrica, Bodegård described the typical patient as 'totally passive, immobile, lacks tonus, withdrawn, mute, unable to eat and drink, incontinent and not reacting to physical stimuli or pain.' Nearly all the children had emigrated from former Soviet and Yugoslav states, and a disproportionate number were Roma or Uyghur. Sweden has been a haven for refugees since the seventies, accepting more asylum seekers per capita than any other European nation, but the country’s definition of political refugees had recently narrowed. Families fleeing countries that were not at war were often denied asylum."
- "In a hundred-and-thirty-page report on the condition, commissioned by the government and published in 2006, a team of psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists hypothesized that it was a culture-bound syndrome, a psychological illness endemic to a specific society. Every culture possesses what Edward Shorter, a medical historian at the University of Toronto, calls a ‘symptom repertoire’--a range of physical symptoms available to the unconscious mind for the physical expression of psychological conflict.”
- "She believes that people cannot be truly healthy unless they have trygghet, a word that in English translates as 'security' but which has a broader meaning in Swedish: trust, a sense of belonging, freedom from danger, anxiety, and fear. The modern Swedish welfare state was built on the idea that it must safeguard trygghet for its citizens, minimizing the risks to which they are exposed. 'Security is the most basic foundation of the individual,' the Swedish minister of social affairs explained, in 1967. 'Nothing good has ever come out of insecurity.'"
- "In a seventy-six-page guide for treating uppgivenhetssyndrom, published in 2013, the Swedish Board of Health and Welfare advises that a patient will not recover until his family has permission to live in Sweden. 'A permanent residency permit is considered by far the most effective ‘treatment,’' the manual says. 'The turning point will usually be a few months to half a year after the family receives permanent residence.' The guidelines draw on the Israeli sociologist Aaron Antonovsky’s notion of a 'sense of coherence.' Mental well-being, Antonovsky theorizes, depends on one’s belief that life is orderly, comprehensible, structured, and predictable. Antonovsky suggests, as Freud did, that psychological illness is born of narrative incoherence, a life story veering off course.