History Main / AngstComa

* ''{{Franchise/Firefly}}'': Mal shuts down completely in ''[[https://m.fanfiction.net/s/3720599/1/A-Safe-Place-in-the-Mind A Safe Place In the Mind]]''due to being tortured. He’s catatonic and River tells the crew Inara can reach him. They take Mal to her, and reaching him takes weeks, with the initial signs of progress being small and gradual. Mal gets more comfortable with Inara touching him, massaging him and just holding him, and he later starts doing a few things on his own, like using the bathroom, and letting Inara feed him. Only then does he finally have a breakthrough and begin speaking and waking up again as Inara reassures him it’s not a dream and he won’t be hurt again.

Sometimes called Post-Traumatic Catatonia, this refers to a situation in which a character enters a comatose or catatonic state that is either directly caused by their personal problems, or cured by dealing with their personal problems, or both. Often, the cure comes when the character confronts their demons in a hallucinatory VisionQuest, sometimes accompanied by one or more friends or loved ones who take a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind. Upon awakening the victim of the coma may behave in a surprisingly happy and upbeat manner. For some reason, this condition is often associated with / exacerbated by GiantMecha.

* Rebecca Morgan in Creator/CatherineAnderson's ''Cherish'' goes into one that nearly ''kills her'' after the outlaws who slaughtered her entire family return to finish her off.

* Happens to Anne Wiazemsky's character in the [[LeFilmArtistique highly stylized]] ([[TrueArtIsIncomprehensible but good!]]) Pasolini film ''Film/{{Teorema}}''.

* Played for laughs several times on ''Series/MarriedWithChildren''. [[TheChewToy Al]] [[ButtMonkey Bundy]] will occasionally faint dead away when his wife [[TheMillstone Peggy]] does something particularly ridiculous, like spending $2,000 on an interior decorating course, redecorating his personal bathroom into a pink feminine nightmare, commissioning a $2,500 painting of herself.

* Margery Daw from ''LightNovel/ShakuganNoShana'' goes into this after [[spoiler:discovering that the demon she was chasing for all her life was in fact a piece of herself]].

* In ''LightNovel/SwordArtOnline'', about halfway through the ''Alicization'' arc, [[spoiler: A power surge on the Ocean Turtle and Eugeo's death in Underworld causes Kirito to fall into this.]]

Compare VisionQuest and JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind, which don't have to include the coma part or necessarily any angst. May overlap with ConvenientComa, which serves the plot rather than the character. When done poorly see: {{Wangst}}.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Anime/FullMetalPanicFumoffu''. After Tessa's ''very'' overt advances become too much for him (after her XO and father-figure informs Sousuke that if anything "happens between them" he'll [[OverprotectiveDad fire Sousuke out a torpedo tube]]), Sousuke faints from the stress. Well, that and the exhaustion of going four days straight without sleep.

* ''Film/BatmanBegins'': "Dr. Crane isn't here right now, but if you'd like to make an appointment..."

* ''Anime/HowlsMovingCastle'': "[[LargeHam I SEE NO POINT IN LIVING IF I CAN'T BE BEAUTIFUL]]."

* In his 1956 "Secret Speech" condemning Stalin's cult of personality, UsefulNotes/NikitaKhrushchev made up a story about UsefulNotes/JosefStalin going into an Angst Coma for a week when he heard about the German invasion ("he completely fell to pieces!") and having to be confronted at his Dacha and convinced to lead the country. To cut a long story short, it was a huge lie and was completely untrue. To spell it out at length: while such blatant character assassination of Stalin was rather redundant, Khrushchev's biographers have speculated that he may have been psychologically projecting some of his own character flaws (panicking under pressure, fear of responsibility, poor understanding of military matters) onto Stalin. Stalin's appointments book, the ''hundreds'' of lengthy decrees and communiques written or dictated by Stalin in the following days, and the memoirs of people who were actually around Stalin at that time (Khrushchev was stationed in Kiev as the Kiev Military District's Commissar), confirm that from the day of the invasion he actually worked six days of what averaged out to 18-hour days at very irregular hours (with the aid of cat-naps), spending up to twelve hours at a time in continuous meetings, before his body failed him and had to go to his Dacha to get a good night's sleep. When he woke up Georgy Zhukov himself attested that he went to the STAVKA (military high command) to harangue them, went to lunch, then come back to harangue them some more before going home to get some more sleep. The next day he summoned the leadership to make him the head of the newly-created State Defense Committee. Because Anastas Mikoyan (assistant to Vyacheslav Molotov, Foreign Minister) was at that meeting, Mikoyan's recollection of it (in his memoirs) is often used to bolster and seemingly "confirm" Khruschev's story. While most post-''Glasnost'' Stalin biographers simply haven't done enough (original) research to realize that Khrushchev lied (e.g. Alan Bullock), others have included it just because it's dramatic and vindicates hatred of Stalin (e.g. Simon Sebag Montefiore).

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Dark Page", Counselor Troi enlists the aid of a powerful alien telepath to enter the mind of her comatose mother and help her deal with [[spoiler:her first daughter's death]].

[[folder:Theater]]
* In ''Theatre/OrpheusAPoeticDrama'', after her death by snake bite and subsequent Underworld arrival, Eurydice is in a state of sleep that Hades is unable to wake her from. Orpheus's music does the trick.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Religion]]
* In ''Literature/TheBookOfMormon'', Alma the Younger got up to a lot of anti-church antics as a kid. After an angel appeared to chastise him for this behavior, Alma fell into a deep sleep that lasted two days and during which he faced his sins and was forgiven.

* The finale of ''Manga/TokyoGhoul'' sees [[spoiler:Shuu Tsukiyama]] fall into one after failing to stop [[spoiler:Ken Kaneki]] from going on an apparent suicide mission. The sequel reveals that he has barely recovered during the two year TimeSkip, having become an IllBoy as a result of his [[TheLostLenore grief]] and depression.

* ''ComicBook/InvestiGators'': [[spoiler: Near the end of ''Off The Hook'', Brash is in a coma after almost dying inside Crackerdile/Waffledile and is sent to the hospital. He is in perfectly healthy condition but there is something blocking his mind from waking up. He then has to be replaced by a robotic copy. In ''Ants in Our P.A.N.T.S.'', Mango helps Brash wake up from his coma by overcoming his fears and forgiving himself.]]

* In ''Film/StarWarsTheForceAwakens'', [=R2D2=] has apparently been in the robotic equivalent of one for several years, ever since [[spoiler:Luke Skywalker disappeared]].

Sometimes called Post-Traumatic Catatonia, this refers to a situation in which a character enters a comatose or catatonic state that is either directly caused by his personal problems, or cured by dealing with his personal problems, or both. Often, the cure comes when the character confronts his demons in a hallucinatory VisionQuest, sometimes accompanied by one or more friends or loved ones who take a JourneyToTheCenterOfTheMind. Upon awakening the victim of the coma may behave in a surprisingly happy and upbeat manner. For some reason, this condition is often associated with / exacerbated by GiantMecha.

* ''ComicBook/InvestiGators'': [[spoiler: Near the end of ''Off The Hook'', Brash is in a coma after almost dying inside Crackerdile/Waffledile and is sent to the hospital. He is in perfectly healthy condition but there is something blocking his mind from waking up. He then has to be replaced by a robotic copy.]]

** Black also goes through one, when [[his Musharna leaves him. It takes a while for him to pick himself up from the ordeal.]]

* In ''VideoGame/XenobladeChronicles'', Sharla sinks into unconsciousness after her younger brother Juju is kidnapped by Xord. She remains out cold for four hours, and is even haunted by a nightmare right before waking up.

* In ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', Asuka suffers her infamous MindRape by the fifteenth Angel (not to mention that her life was already going down the drain before that). That puts her in an increasingly severe State of HeroicBSOD for the reminder of the series. She ends up catatonic by Episode 24. She gets better. For about five minutes.

* Luke Skywalker in the ''{{Franchise/Star Wars Legends}}'' fic ''[[https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3033613/1/Whisper_Your_Weakness]]'' after being tortured nearly to death. He sees his father while he's out, and Anakin convices him to wake up.