Apathy
An apathetic individual has an absence of interest in or concern about emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, virtual, or physical life and the world.
People with severe apathy tend to have a lower quality of life and are at a higher risk for mortality and early institutionalization.
[4] In positive psychology, apathy is described as a result of the individuals' feeling they do not possess the level of skill required to confront a challenge (i.e. "flow").
Apathy is usually felt only in the short term, but sometimes it becomes a long-term or even lifelong state, often leading to deeper social and psychological issues.
[6] Although the word apathy was first used in 1594[10] and is derived from the Greek ἀπάθεια (apatheia), from ἀπάθης (apathēs, "without feeling" from a- ("without, not") and pathos ("emotion")),[11] it is important not to confuse the two terms.
[16] The modern concept of apathy became more well known after World War I, when it was one of the various forms of "shell shock", now better known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
[17] Soldiers who lived in the trenches amidst the bombing and machine gun fire, and who saw the battlefields strewn with dead and maimed comrades, developed a sense of disconnected numbness and indifference to normal social interaction when they returned from combat.
In 1950, US novelist John Dos Passos wrote: "Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with.
[20] French social commentator and political thinker Charles de Montesquieu stated that "the tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in the democracy.
On the contrary, only fourteen percent cited "gaining an understanding of content knowledge or learning subject material" as their motivation to do well in school.
Some of the signs of apathetic students include declining grades, skipping classes, routine illness, and behavioral changes both in school and at home.
The murder took place in New York and the victim, Genovese, was stabbed to death as bystanders reportedly stood by and did nothing to stop the situation or even call the police.
The scale is based around questionnaires that ask about topics including interest, motivation, socialization, and how the individual spends their time.
[34][35][36][37][38] Mental health journalist and author John McManamy argues that although psychiatrists do not explicitly deal with the condition of apathy, it is a psychological problem for some depressed people, in which they get a sense that "nothing matters", the "lack of will to go on and the inability to care about the consequences".
In a Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences article from 1991, Robert Marin, MD, claimed that pathological apathy occurs due to brain damage or neuropsychiatric illnesses such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's disease, or stroke.
[6] A review article by Robert van Reekum, MD, et al. from the University of Toronto in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry (2005) claimed that an obvious relationship between depression and apathy exists in some populations.
[43] Cholinesterase inhibitors, used as the first line of treatment for the cognitive symptoms associated with dementia, have also shown some modest benefit for behavior disturbances such as apathy.
[44] The effects of donepezil, galantamine and rivastigmine have all been assessed but, overall, the findings have been inconsistent, and it is estimated that apathy in ~60% of Alzheimer's patients does not respond to treatment with these drugs.
Management of apathetic symptoms using methylphenidate has shown promise in randomized placebo controlled trials of Alzheimer's patients.
[45][46][47] A phase III multi-centered randomized placebo-controlled trial of methylphenidate for the treatment of apathy has reported positive effects.
[53][54] Pathological apathy is considered to be one of the diagnostic features of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia,[55] occurring in the majority of people with this condition.
[58] Often, apathy is felt after witnessing horrific acts, such as the killing or maiming of people during a war, e.g. posttraumatic stress disorder.
