Anhedonia: The Art Of Losing One’s Mind

 

              image credit: PusheenLovesLife

By Osuolale Oluwatomilayo 

To every struggling student, you are heard, you matter and you will pull through. 

 

“Last year, I experienced the worst phase of my life. I fell out with friends, broke up with my then boyfriend, moved on a bit too fast and ended up in a pit. I was broken but I still went to every class like I wasn’t losing my mind. It’s hard. I eventually ‘got over it’ but I don’t think I've genuinely recovered from that year. Do we ever? Make person no sha craze at the end.” Oluwadamilola, a student of University of Ibadan.

 

Before the world manages to slip from your cold fingers, you first think to be alone, but you aren’t. Your mind has only secluded you from the pleasures of the world. You sit with friends and still feel absent. You laugh, but it is hollow, a ghost of a sound. You eat, but the food feels tasteless, as if your tongue has forgotten its function. You look at books, screens, or the sky, and nothing feels like it belongs to you. It is not your fault, it never was.

This is the shadow that lingers behind the word anhedonia: the loss of pleasure, the art of losing one’s mind in the most quiet and subtle way. Unlike the storms of rage or the loud alarms of breakdown, anhedonia creeps in quietly, folding joy out of ordinary things until life feels like a grayscale painting you are condemned to stare at forever.

Depression among students is barely spoken about. It lies grimly under thick layers of lip gloss, ironed skirts, pressed shirts, and polished shoes. The morning rush to class is itself a kind of mask, one that hides the ache in the chest and the heaviness in the limbs. To classmates, you are fine, you are present, you are performing. But to yourself, you are somewhere else, detached from the very life you are trying so hard to live.

Research has shown that almost everyone carries within them fragments of vulnerability: a hint of delusion, a whisper of paranoia, or the shadows of depression. These do not always manifest as diagnosable illnesses, but they remind us that the line between mental health and mental struggle is thin and fragile. And yet, when someone says, “check your mental health,” what does that mean in a system that ruins it more than it builds?

Universities, for instance, are meant to be places of growth and self-discovery, yet for many they are breeding grounds for burnout, anxiety, and depression. The endless cycle of assignments, financial struggles, family expectations, and the unspoken pressure to “make it” creates a quiet war in the minds of students.

One of the cruelest ironies of depression is how well it hides itself. It does not always look like tears or hospital visits. Sometimes, it looks like the perfect student, the one who never misses lectures, who contributes in class, who even laughs the loudest at jokes. Yet behind the scenes, that same student might go back to their room and collapse into bed, not out of sleepiness but out of emptiness.

This mask of functionality is both a survival strategy and a trap. On one hand, it helps individuals move through the day without collapsing under scrutiny. On the other hand, it reinforces silence. Because if you look fine, people assume you are fine. If you keep performing, no one asks if the performance is draining the very soul out of you.

At the heart of many depressive episodes is anhedonia, the clinical word for losing interest in things that once brought joy. The music that once moved you becomes noise. The food you once loved becomes bland. Friends’ conversations feel exhausting rather than exciting. It is not laziness, nor is it ingratitude. It is the brain’s chemistry rebelling against you, numbing out the very receptors that translate experience into pleasure.

Scientists often link anhedonia to disruptions in dopamine pathways, but science alone cannot capture the existential ache it leaves behind. To feel joy slip away is to lose the thread of life itself. People begin to wonder: If nothing feels good, why keep trying? Why keep living?

In many societies, especially here in Nigeria, depression is still spoken of in whispers, if at all. The cultural expectation is endurance. You are told to “pray about it,” “be strong,” “stop overthinking,” or “others have it worse.” These statements, though often well-meaning, only deepen the silence. They reduce complex mental battles to mere weakness of faith or character.

Among students, the silence is even thicker. Talking about depression feels like admitting failure, as though to struggle with your mind means you are not capable enough for academic success. So the pressure builds, and the silence deepens, until some break quietly, unnoticed, in the corners of their rooms.

If anhedonia is the art of losing one’s mind, then healing must be the art of reclaiming it, piece by piece. Healing does not come quickly, nor does it always arrive in the form of sudden happiness. More often, it is about learning to find fragments of light in small things.

For some, it starts with reaching out, finding the courage to say, “I am not okay” to a trusted friend, a counselor, or even in a journal. For others, it may come in professional help: therapy, medication, or structured support that helps restore the brain’s ability to feel.

Universities and institutions, too, must learn that mental health is not a luxury; it is foundational to education. Counseling centers, mental health workshops, peer support groups, and flexible academic policies are not extras, they are necessities. To demand academic brilliance without nurturing mental stability is to build castles on sand.

We must learn to talk about mental health in ways that remove shame. Depression is not a Western illness. It is not a fabrication of weak minds. It is as real as malaria, as real as hypertension. Just as we treat fever with medicine and care, so too must we treat depression with compassion and seriousness. 

We must also recognize that checking on people goes beyond “How are you?” Because often, the answer will be “I’m fine,” even when they are breaking inside. To truly check on someone means listening for the pauses, noticing the silences, and being willing to hold space for their truth without judgment.

The truth about anhedonia is that it convinces you that nothing is worth holding on for. But this is the lie of depression: that emptiness today will last forever. Healing is possible. Joy can return, slowly, in unfamiliar forms. Sometimes it starts with the smallest acts, watching the sky, taking a walk, holding onto a single reason to wake up tomorrow.

For students, for young people, for anyone trapped in the quiet prison of anhedonia, your mind may be tired, your heart may feel numb, but you are not alone. To lose pleasure is not to lose yourself. Beneath the fog, there remains a self worthy of joy, capable of healing, and deserving of love.

Anhedonia is not just the art of losing one’s mind, it is also the reminder of how fragile yet resilient we are. Depression among students and young people must no longer be buried under lip gloss and polished shoes. It must be named, faced, and treated with the seriousness it deserves.

The world may feel like it is slipping from your cold fingers, but you are not beyond reach. You are not broken beyond repair. Healing is not easy, but it is possible. And in the end, the art of reclaiming joy is just as real as the art of losing it.