Five children from asylum-seeking families required hospital care due to serious
loss of function arising in the ‘limbo’ conditions in which
they were living as refugees. Hopelessness, helplessness and an uncertain time
perspective dominated family life; they had not worked through the traumas of
the intolerable life from which they had fled. The massive loss of functions in
the children resembles that of pervasive refusal syndrome (PRS), but the
purposive aspect of the refusal seemed less pronounced. Treatment applying the
principles for managing PRS was rapidly successful. The fixed behaviour of the
mothers - staging a delusion/fantasy that the child was dying - was interpreted
as a desperate coping strategy. It made the situation
‘understandable’ and bestowed on them a role and a
meaningful function. Improvements in the children were not noticed until the
mothers gave up this ‘lethal’ mothering. The interplay
between parents and their children seemed of greater importance to the child
than the information provided by the actual circumstances of their lives. The
hypothesis about ‘lethal mothering’ presented here adds a
psychodynamic perspective to the theory of ‘learned hopelessness and
helplessness’; both are seen as relevant in understanding the
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