Introduction
In recent years, there has been growing interest and concern related to the apparent disengagement, of young people in particular, from public and political spheres. Evidence converges to show that communal and civic participation has dropped drastically since the 1970s (Putnam, 2000). This trend has generally been credited to a rise in apathy. Concern with apathy is not restricted to politics. In the clinic, apathy is increasingly diagnosed in neurological and psychiatric patients and has become a topic of great interest (Starkstein & Leentjens, 2008). In a classical clinical description frequently used to illustrate apathy, Bleuler (1911/1950) wrote of psychiatric patients who
…sit about the institution to which they are confined with expressionless faces, hunched up, the image of indifference. They permit themselves to be dressed up and undressed like automatons, to be led from their customary place of inactivity to the mess hall, and back again without expressing any...
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Online Resources
Citizenry network project for youth. http://apathyisboring.com/en/the_facts
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Pechenkov, I.G. (2014). Apathy, Overview. In: Teo, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Critical Psychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-5583-7_680
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