Real-Life “Stranger Things”:

In the Netflix universe of Stranger Things, when children fall into comas, they don’t simply sleep. They drift. They travel. Their minds slip into another dimension—the Upside Down—where fear, memory, and survival blur together. It’s fiction, sure—neon bikes, flickering lights, government labs.

But in Sweden, something hauntingly similar has unfolded—minus the synth soundtrack.

There is a real condition with a heavy, almost poetic name: uppgivenhetssyndrom, or resignation syndrome. And like a dark season arc no one asked for, it has quietly consumed hundreds of children.

These are not kids battling monsters with slingshots. They are asylum-seeking children—mostly from former Soviet and Yugoslav states—who, after traumatic migrations, receive the devastating news that their families will be deported. That’s when it happens.

They go to bed.

And they don’t come back.

For months. Sometimes years.

They stop moving. Stop speaking. Stop eating. Stop reacting. They exist in a coma-like stillness—eyes closed, bodies alive, minds unreachable. Doctors can lift their arms, shine lights into their eyes, speak their names. Nothing breaks through. Like characters trapped between worlds, they are physically present but mentally gone.

If Stranger Things taught us anything, it’s that terror doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it whispers. Sometimes it lulls you into stillness.

Journalist Rachel Aviv recounted encountering two sisters—Roma girls from Kosovo—who had found themselves imprisoned in this state. The older sister lost the ability to walk within 24 hours of her family’s asylum rejection. The younger followed soon after. One had been “gone” for two years. The other, only takes months. They looked peaceful, even beautiful. Like they were dreaming.

But no one knew what they were dreaming of.

Another boy, living in a hotel while his family waited on paperwork, had been unresponsive for two years. Even after his family finally received residency permits, he barely stirred. He could open his eyes. He could sit up. But his head wouldn’t hold itself. His presence felt ghostlike—there, but not there. A mannequin with a pulse.

In Stranger Things, the kids eventually find their way back—usually with a surge of music, memory, or love pulling them home. In Sweden, the only known cure is heartbreakingly bureaucratic: residency approval.

When families are granted permission to stay, something remarkable happens. Not instantly. Not magically. But slowly—over weeks or months—the child begins to return. They eat. They move. They react. It’s as if the message slips through whatever veil they’ve crossed: You’re safe now.

One boy, Georgi, recovered fully. If you met him today, you’d never know he lost two years of his childhood to silence. But those years? Gone forever. A missing chapter. Like a season that aired while no one was watching.

Why Sweden? That’s the eerie part.

Sweden treats refugees better than most countries. There’s public debate, political concern, national guilt. Doctors are attuned to how social conditions affect health. And culture, it turns out, shapes how despair is expressed. Once resignation syndrome became recognized—almost permitted—it spread. Like a storyline that catches on because it finally gives shape to unspeakable fear.

Some experts compare it to psychological contagion. Others to martyrdom. Children absorbing their families’ terror, carrying it in their bodies, sacrificing themselves so their loved ones can stay.

In Stranger Things, the Upside Down is a place born from trauma. So is this.

The difference? These children don’t battle monsters. They become unreachable instead.

And the real horror isn’t that they leave our world.

It’s that sometimes, the only way back… is a stamp on a piece of paper.

Like the children of Stranger Things, these real-life kids remind us that trauma doesn’t always scream—it sometimes disappears inward. Their silence forces the world to listen. This listening confronts society with an uncomfortable truth: hope, safety, and belonging can be as life-saving as any medicine.

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Sources:

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/03/30/521958505/only-in-sweden-hundreds-of-refugee-children-gave-up-on-life