[1] Young people reportedly develop depressive symptoms, become socially withdrawn, and become motionless and speechless as a reaction to stress and hopelessness.
[4] Acknowledging its social importance and relevance, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare recognized the novel diagnostic entity resignation syndrome in 2014.
Experts have proposed multifactorial explanatory models involving individual vulnerability, traumatization, migration, culturally conditioned reaction patterns and parental dysfunction or pathological adaption to a caregiver's expectations to interplay in pathogenesis.
[1] An asserted “questioning attitude”, in particular within the health care system, it has been claimed, may constitute a “perpetuating retraumatization possibly explaining the endemic” distribution.
[2] The phenomenon has been called into question, with two children reporting that they were forced by their parents to act apathetic in order to increase chances of being granted residence permits.
[13][14] As evidenced by medical records, healthcare professionals were aware of this scam and witnessed parents who actively refused aid for their children but remained silent at the time.
[15] In March 2020, a report citing the Swedish Agency for Medical and Social Evaluation, SBU, said "There are no scientific studies that answer how to diagnose abandonment syndrome, nor what treatment works".