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Navigating Apathy and Depression
When you sit down to video chat with your friends, you might expect to feel happy and excited. When your partner needs help making a tough decision at work, you want to feel sympathetic and supportive. But instead, you might not feel anything. Apathy can come in related but distinct forms, from disinterest to lack of motivation. It can make it difficult to perform daily activities, complete projects at work or school, and keep up social relationships.
These are some of the same issues that characterize depression, but are apathy and depression the same thing? No, though apathy can be a sign that you're experiencing depression. If apathy has become a persistent challenge in your life, read on to learn how it relates to depression and other conditions and how to find effective treatment.
What Is Apathy?
We have a natural inclination to seek out stimuli—new challenges, hobbies, and relationships that satisfy our curiosity. If you feel no desire to partake in these experiences or you suddenly lose interest in activities you previously enjoyed, it may be a sign of apathy.
Apathy is a lack of emotion, interest or concern for daily activities or events going on around you. Apathy may be situational and temporary, or it may be persistent and ongoing. It is normal to go through moments where you lose interest in things due to acute stress, but if this happens more frequently or at atypical times, it can prevent you from enjoying life, impede your work, or challenge your connections with other people.
While apathy on its own is not a clinical condition, one psychologist characterized it as an "attitude" that can indicate an underlying condition. For example, apathy may be a sign of a neurodegenerative condition, as persistent apathy can be caused by issues with the region of the brain that regulates emotion and behavior. In one study, 45 percent of people with dementia experienced a lack of interest amounting to apathy. Apathy, in addition to memory loss, is also a primary symptom of Alzheimer's disease.
Apathy can be a sign of other conditions, such as
Parkinson's disease,
schizophrenia,
post-traumatic stress disorder, and
Huntington's disease—as well as depression. Doctors who note apathy in their patients will often take steps to determine whether an underlying medical condition can be treated to improve symptoms. Experiencing disinterest in daily activities is also a sign of anhedonia, which makes it easy to confuse it with apathy. However, they are distinct. A person with anhedonia mainly experiences a lack of pleasure in their daily activities, without the lack of motivation that is common in apathy. That said, in some cases you may experience apathy and anhedonia at the same time.
Does Depression Cause Apathy?
It can be easy to confuse depression with apathy, as both can cause you to experience disinterest in daily activities. Feeling unexcited about life in general is a common occurrence with both, as is a lack of motivation to achieve your goals.
Just as apathy can indicate the neurodegenerative and other disorders described above, it can also be a symptom of depression. According to one study that aimed to define diagnostic criteria for apathy, apathy was a characteristic in 94 percent of depressive episodes. Based on those criteria, these symptoms must last for four weeks or longer to qualify as apathy.
Apathy may be diagnosed as a symptom of depression if you experience it alongside other symptoms of depression, including physical indicators like pain and fatigue and emotional indicators like sadness, hopelessness, or guilt. To understand whether the apathy you are experiencing is tied to depression or to a different underlying condition—and how best to treat it—talk to your doctor about any other symptoms you may be feeling.
Seeking Treatment
If you persistently feel apathetic and unhappy, it's important to consult a doctor or mental health professional for diagnosis and treatment, even if you do not think you have depression. You may be able to address apathy with psychotherapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), individual therapy, or prescribed medication. These methods are also frequently recommended for treating depression. However, because everyone with depression experiences the condition differently, certain treatments may be more effective for some people than for others. In fact, one in three people still experience depression symptoms after trying two medications.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) therapy is another option when first-line treatments have not worked. TMS is FDA-cleared for the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder when medications have not been effective, TMS is a non-invasive, non-drug treatment that uses gentle magnetic pulses to stimulate specific areas of the brain to improve symptoms of depression and help you regain the motivation and emotional response you have been missing. To learn more about whether TMS is right for you,
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