Anhedonia comes from the Greek an-, meaning ‘not, without’ and hedone, meaning ‘pleasure’. Hence, a person with anhedonia is without pleasure.
Specifically, anhedonia is when a person no longer finds previously pleasurable things and activities pleasurable.
It is the main symptom of depression and is also present in other mental health conditions like:
- Schizophrenia
- Eating disorders
- Bipolar disorder
- Substance abuse disorders
Anhedonia can occur independently of any mental health condition.
Anhedonia is similar to emotional numbness. Emotional numbness is usually talked about in the context of avoiding emotional pain. Anhedonia is discussed in the context of pleasure- the inability to experience pleasure.
Of course, when you shut down your emotions, you shut down both positive (anhedonia) and negative (emotional numbness) emotions. So anhedonia and emotional numbness are really two sides of the same coin.
Emotional detachment, on the other hand, is essentially social-emotional numbness.
Taking the Anhedonia test
This test consists of 15 items on a 4-point scale ranging from Strongly agree to Strongly disagree. When answering the items, think about what applies to your recent past and current situation.
Your results are only shown to you and not stored in our database.
