Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio, Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff Lauren bog Obam here. Even as the general
Speaker 1: public has gained a better understanding of mental health issues
Speaker 1: like depression and anxiety over recent years, some psychological symptoms
Speaker 1: remain a mystery to many. For today's example, and hadonia.
Speaker 1: This is a condition in which a person finds themselves
Speaker 1: unable to experience pleasure from acts that are generally pleasurable
Speaker 1: or that they once enjoyed. That can include the absence
Speaker 1: of good feelings someone might expect from things and activities
Speaker 1: like friendship, food, sex, or music. The term was originally
Speaker 1: coined in by a French psychologist, stemming from the Greek
Speaker 1: words and meaning without an heat own, meaning pleasure. We
Speaker 1: spoke via email with Los Angeles based psychotherapist Alyssa Mass
Speaker 1: m f T. She said, an adonia is the lack
Speaker 1: of experiencing joy or pleasure. It's typically thought of as
Speaker 1: a symptom of depression, though it can also exist separately.
Speaker 1: In addition to depression, antadonia can accompany other mental health
Speaker 1: issues like schizophrenia and orexia nervosa and substance use disorders.
Speaker 1: You can also signal issues like Parkinson's disease. For some people,
Speaker 1: antadonia can be social or emotional, meaning that they no
Speaker 1: longer feel joy being around people, or it can be physical,
Speaker 1: meaning sensations like touch can feel empty or food can
Speaker 1: taste bland. The causes of antidonia can vary, and while
Speaker 1: it's associated with depression, a person doesn't necessarily have to
Speaker 1: have depression to have antadonia. Experts believed antadonia may be
Speaker 1: linked to changes in brain activity and an inability to
Speaker 1: produce or respond to the feel good hormone dopamine. Some
Speaker 1: preliminary research that's been performed on rats indicates that antadonia
Speaker 1: may be tied to an overactive prefrontal cortex, impacting the
Speaker 1: dopamine neurons and interfering with the path is the control
Speaker 1: how and why we seek out and experience desire and rewards.
Speaker 1: Other research indicates that other brain areas and structures could
Speaker 1: also be involved, like the amygdala, which processes emotion, the
Speaker 1: striatum associated with the reward system, and the insula, connected
Speaker 1: to self awareness and consciousness. While there's no single way
Speaker 1: to treat antadonia, many mental health experts lean on strategies
Speaker 1: prescribed for depression, including talk therapy, and in some cases,
Speaker 1: medications like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSR eyes. There is, however,
Speaker 1: evidence to suggest that while s SR eyes can work
Speaker 1: great with some symptoms of depression, they may not help
Speaker 1: much with the lack of motivation and deficits and reward
Speaker 1: processing that often accompany depression, which means they may not
Speaker 1: help much with antadonia. For now, mental health experts are
Speaker 1: continuing to incorporate antidonia assessment into their work with clients
Speaker 1: and working with them to help find coping strategies. Mass said,
Speaker 1: in cases of depression long or short term, I always
Speaker 1: screen for antadonia. If a client screens positive for it,
Speaker 1: then it's really about looking at everything that's going on
Speaker 1: and treating the depression as a whole until there's relief
Speaker 1: from that. It's impossible to tell if the antidonia is
Speaker 1: part of the depression or something that exists on its own.
Speaker 1: If someone's case history tells me they never had antidonia
Speaker 1: until the depression hit, in that case, it's likely more
Speaker 1: treatable than if it had always existed and is more
Speaker 1: of a baseline. Today's episode was written by Michelle Constant
Speaker 1: Anoski and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this
Speaker 1: and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuffworks dot com.
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