Unusual Risk Factors for Anhedonia

Anhedonia is something that can strike at any time and for a number of different reasons. There are, as with any illness or complication from medication certain risk factors which can make it more likely for a person to be affected by anhedonia than your regular everyday person.

This list aims to show 8 unusual risk factors for the development of anhedonia that may not have been considered before or in much detail. As with any medical or health concern, it is always a good idea to seek the advice of a doctor for anything that seems unusual or troubling, as this will provide a person with the best platform from which to seek out the best and most appropriate forms of treatment.

It is also true that just because these risk factors might cause one person to develop anhedonia, it doesn’t mean that everyone who displays these risk factors will go the same way and end up developing anhedonia themselves.

1.     Major depressive disorder

The condition known as anhedonia occurs in up 70% of people with a major depressive disorder, which is a staggeringly high percentage. Anhedonia is recognized as a core symptom of major depressive disorders; meaning that individuals experiencing this symptom could be diagnosed with depression, even in the absence of any discernible or easily identifiable low or depressed mood and sadness.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) describes what it calls a lack of interest or pleasure amongst sufferers, but these can be difficult to identify or diagnose given that people, as a rule, do tend to become less interested in things which do not give them pleasure.

Things, like eating food or listening to music, are good ways of measuring whether anhedonia is present, but it is absolutely necessary that a combination of quantitative data and anecdotal evidence from times of good health are available so that comparisons can be drawn fairly.