Apathy is a term expressed and used in the field of psychology, since it refers to a state of mind in which an individual shows or reflects a lack of emotion, motivation or enthusiasm for events or people in their daily life, people who suffer from apathy show certain characteristics, such as, for example, physical muscle wasting, as well as, the lack of energy to perform any activity and sometimes doing things by inertia.
The term comes from the Latin word “apathia” which refers to the lack of strength, reluctance, indifference and selflessness, understanding that all these terms are linked to the mood in which a person does not want to do anything , is adrift, or simply does not care what may or may not happen around it.
Apathy is reflected through a virtually null action, or mostly, in an inaction against external stimuli, which cause the person to show a lack of interest or little concern with what happened in their daily life or in their environment of development.
We can also find the word used in other everyday aspects. For example, we can mention social apathy or citizen apathy, which is the one felt by citizens of the social community because of the problems of their society or their country, that is, they have full disinterest and do not care in any way what happens in their around.
Similarly, sexual apathy is one that has to do when one of the members of the couple loses sexual desire for the other, this can be caused by different reasons, as well as it can be with that single person or with any another, is a problem also treated with psychological treatment since the causes of sexual desire can not be caused by trauma, stress or other cause.
On many occasions, apathy can be confused with terms such as laziness or boredom, however, when you are in the presence of a psychological problem they have nothing to do with the first with the last 2. While diagnosed apathy can be understood as the product of a disease such as stress or anxiety, laziness is a capital sin as expressed in the Bible, since a person who is lazy suffers from a state in which his soul is loss or completely destroyed. It is common that in the colloquial dialect of people, they want to refer to a person lazily using the term apathetic.
Apathy then is the lack of interest, detachment or indolence, however, in the Eastern world there are religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism, which seeks, through meditation, a state of disinterest in the banal world, which is very controversial for experts in theology who could come to consider this state achieved through meditation as a dissociation or indifference.
Causes
There are several causes for a person to suffer from apathy, one of which we can mention, the envelope or lack of weight and energy product of a proper diet, and that is that a poorly fed person can generate that he does not have enough energy that requires the body to perform the necessary day-to-day activities, which generates a lack of interest in carrying them out by the individual. This can be improved with proper nutrition to obtain the necessary energy to carry out the activities.
Other of the most common causes of apathy are those that are associated with the routine exercised by people and the little interest they may have in performing them, for example a person who must get up very early to perform a job of which he feels no interest. Someone may feel apathy for doing it. This is about performing tasks of greater interest to the person, or looking for one that can motivate them to perform their work better or work on something they really like. This is why vocational tests are very often used today, to find out in which areas a person could perform better according to their vocational skills and abilities.
Among the medical causes of apathy, we can find a direct relationship with diseases such as depression and anxiety, as well as Alzheimer’s and dementia, which directly affect the cognitive functioning and alterations of the person’s organism. In relation to depression and anxiety these must be fought with psychological treatment and psychotherapy.
Apathy and empathy
The term apathy is completely different from the expression empathy, while apathy reflects the absence of feelings, interest, empathy, achieves a connection between one person and another, since it is said to be able to place oneself in the situation of the other, to the point of feeling the joy or sadness of the other.
