In the years before 16-year-old Bahar became ill, she would tell her mum “I don’t want to go back to Syria, I want to stay here in Sweden”. She was terrified by media coverage of the atrocities perpetrated on Yazidi women by the Islamic State.



But she was also a happy teenage girl, a committed school student who wanted to be a police officer when she grew up. She entered puberty in the years before she fell ill; she finished developing in the throes of the syndrome, lying in bed.

Her younger brother is 12, and dreams of becoming a professional soccer player.

“It doesn’t feel nice to not know 100% whether you can stay or not. But I really like it here, so I try to think I should [make] the most of it while I’m here,” he says.

His tender gift to his big sister is pop music. “Before she got sick she loved to listen to music, so what I do is I put on some good music on my phone and I leave it next to her so she can enjoy it.”

Bahar’s vital signs are relatively good. Her pulse is fast – a sign of distress – but her blood pressure is normal, and her spinal cord reflexes are working fine.

Hultcrantz picks up Bahar’s arm, positions it over her head and drops it. It falls limply onto Bahar’s face.

“She has no protection reflexes,” Hultcrantz says. “If you take her arm and let it fall like this, it just drops over her nose without her blinking or anything.”

The same reaction – that is to say, nothing – would happen with other types of pain stimulus too, like a pinch, or a needle, Hultcrantz says. This means Bahar is in the deepest level of resignation syndrome.

She has been sick for a year, and her family has been waiting for permanent residency in Sweden for a decade.

“But that's it, everything is working perfectly well,” Hultcrantz says, finishing up her assessment. “With the right conditions she will wake up again and be completely healthy again. And become a policeman as she wants to be.”

*Not his real name.

If you or someone you know needs help, you can contact Lifeline's 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention hotline on 13 11 14 in Australia. Trauma resources are available at phoenixaustralia.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org.



