Synonyms
Abulia; Amotivational; Anhedonia; Negative symptom
Short Description or Definition
In the vernacular, the word apathy generally refers to indifference or a lack of feeling or concern. In clinical settings, “apathy” is often conceptualized as a lack of drive or motivation, a lack of responsiveness (behavioral or emotional) to stimuli or a lack of initiation, or a reduction in self-generated, purposeful behavior.
Epidemiology
Apathy has been described in a variety of psychiatric, neurological, and medical conditions including depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, frontotemporal dementia, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), Parkinson’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, Huntington’s disease, cortical basal degeneration, dementia with Lewy bodies, stroke, vascular dementia, cerebral autosomal dominant arteriopathy with subcortical infarcts and leukoencephalopathy (CADASIL), traumatic brain injury (TBI), anoxic encephalopathy, Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome,...
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Frakey, L.L. (2018). Apathy. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_1879
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