Suzanne O’Sullivan. Photo: Jonathan Greet

A LEADING Bloomsbury medical consultant has shone a light on one of the world’s most mysterious illnesses, in which groups of young children sleep, sometimes for more than a year.

Now, in an interview with Review, Dr Suzanne O’Sullivan, author of The Sleeping Beauties and other Stories of Mystery Illness, calls for more understanding and compassion for the worrying condition.

She believes that rather than suffering from a biological disease, the children – all primary school-age girls living in Sweden – may be affected by a kind of psychosomatic illness described as “resignation-syndrome”.

O’Sullivan is a neurologist at the Royal National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen’s Square. She writes that the 169 young, apparently comatosed children all belong to asylum-seeking families, often from troubled or war-torn countries, who faced the frightening prospect of being deported back home.

The book also contains examples of UK patients suffering from what is thought to be psychosomatic illness.

O’Sullivan, a north London resident originally from Dublin, said it was important to sympathise with those afflicted by the condition.

“I think people just need to be aware of how we speak with our bodies. Our psychological and social worlds impact on how we experience physical health. Many of us, me included, experienced physical manifestations of distress during the pandemic.

“We searched our bodies for signs of Covid and worried when we found something amiss. Nothing could be more normal and I hope knowing that will give people peace of mind.”

In a Swedish hospital ward children were fed through feeding tubes, while physiotherapists kept their joints mobile and their lungs clear and nurses made sure they didn’t develop pressure sores through inactivity. Ultimately, being in hospital didn’t make much difference, so many children were sent home to be cared for by their parents.

“I could see Nola lying in a bed to my right,” O’Sullivan writes. “She was about 10 years old, I guessed. This was her bedroom. I had come knowing what to expect, but somehow I still wasn’t prepared. Five people and one dog had just walked into the room, but she didn’t have so much as a flicker of acknowledgement for any of us. She just lay perfectly still, her eyes closed, apparently peaceful. I was told that she’d been like this for over a year and a half.”

The sleeping girls, who were otherwise in good health, came from desperate foreign families who had at first been treated kindly by the Swedes and given temporary residency and homes. The children went to school and learnt Swedish. The “sleeping mode” seemed to occur when families were informed that they had been refused asylum.

Significantly, O’Sullivan writes, it was the children who first opened letters on behalf of their families, when the authorities announced that asylum was being refused. They are often the only ones in the family who speak Swedish. She argues in her fascinating book that Sweden originally had a reputation for being liberal, less racist and less hostile to immigrants than many other countries and, until fairly recently, families with children suffering from resignation syndrome were offered automatic asylum.

“In 2014, the Swedish prime minister asked the population to ‘open their hearts’ to asylum seekers, and there followed a year in which a record number of foreign nationals arrived in the country.

“But the mood soon changed: in keeping with a worldwide trend, Sweden saw a rise in right-wing politics and anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the number of new asylum cases subsequently dropped drastically.”

O’Sullivan refers in the book to a patient named Sienna who came to her Bloomsbury clinic. The patient believed that she had all the signs of epilepsy even though a number of tests indicated otherwise. Instead, Sienna is informed she may suffer from a stress disorder called “dissociation” which is when she is overloaded or distracted by life’s problems.

O’Sullivan says she has learned that the best chance of recovery from stress disorders is when a patient can be surrounded by a community that can listen without judgment and provide support.

“A community that can tolerate imperfection and failure, and which has the humility to put aside its vested interests. A community that is able to take a holistic view of health.”

On a personal note Dr O’Sullivan said although she misses Dublin, she is beginning to enjoy London.

“Everything is available here. I once woke up on a Saturday morning and decided I wanted to learn how to swing dance and two hours later I was in a dancing class.

“Few cities could serve my needs quite as well as that. I love the theatres, restaurants and cinemas and I would struggle to move to a smaller or less cosmopolitan city.

“I am now as much a Londoner as I am a Dubliner.”

• The Sleeping Beauties And Other Stories of Mystery Illness. By Suzanne O’Sullivan, Picador, £12.23