Educational reference
About this symptom
Reduced interest or pleasure describes a loss of enjoyment in activities that previously mattered, and often a loss of the motivation to begin them at all. Clinically it is sometimes called anhedonia.
People describe it in two related ways. Some find that activities still happen but feel flat: the music plays, the meal is eaten, nothing registers. Others find the anticipation gone, so nothing seems worth starting. Both can occur together.
It commonly extends to relationships, work, sex, food and hobbies, and it is one of the features people find hardest to explain to others, because from the outside it can look like indifference or laziness rather than an inability to feel reward.
It occurs most prominently in depressive conditions, and also in schizophrenia-spectrum conditions, in some neurological conditions, and as an effect of certain medications. Its presence does not establish a diagnosis.