@TickTockMan,
TickTockMan;78694 wrote:Oh please tell me you're not suggesting that clinical depression is a form of boredom . . . .
Absolutely! They are most definitely linked. Just type in boredom in you browser and see for yourself. I found these two in a matter of minutes.
(1)"
Boredom, or
ennui (pronounced "on-we," this French word comes from Old French enui, root of the English word 'annoy') is a reactive state to wearingly dull, repetitive, or tedious stimuli: suffering from a lack of interesting things to see, hear, etc., or do (physically or intellectually), while not in the mood of "doing nothing". Those afflicted by temporary boredom may regard the affliction as a waste of time, but usually characterise boredom worse than just that. Alternatively one may have the feeling that having too much spare time causes boredom. Indeed, time often appears to move more slowly to someone suffering from boredom. This results from the way in which the human mind measures the passage of time, by the frequency of notable events, the absence of which may cause the feeling of boredom.
Boredom can also occur as a symptom of clinical depression."
(2)Boredom has been defined by C. D. Fisher in terms of its central psychological processes: "an unpleasant, transient
affect
Affect
The term Affect generally suggests an emotion. It is used in various ways in various contexts:* Affect .* Affect , referring to feeling or emotion....
ive state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest
Interest (emotion)
Interest is a feeling or emotion that causes attention to focus on an object or an event or a process. In contemporary psychology of interest it is used as a general concept which encompasses other more specific emotion terms, such as curiosity and to a certain degree surprise , in a similar way the general term anger encompasses other terms...
in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity." M. R. Leary and others describe boredom as "an affective experience associated with cognitive attentional processes." These definitions make it clear that boredom arises not from a lack of things to do but from the inability to latch onto any specific activity. Nothing engages us, despite an often profound desire for engagement.
There are three types of boredom, all of which involve problems of engagement of attention
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a room or listening to a cell phone conversation while driving a car....
. These include times when we are prevented from engaging in something, when we are forced to engage in some unwanted activity, or when we are simply unable, for no apparent reason, to maintain engagement in any activity or spectacle. Boredom proneness is a tendency to experience boredom of all types. This is typically assessed by the Boredom Proneness Scale. Consistent with the definition provided above, recent research has found that boredom proneness is clearly and consistently associated with failures of attention
Attention
Attention is the cognitive process of selectively concentrating on one aspect of the environment while ignoring other things. Examples include listening carefully to what someone is saying while ignoring other conversations in a room or listening to a cell phone conversation while driving a car....
. Boredom and boredom proneness are both theoretically and empirically linked to depression
Depression (mood)
In the fields of psychology and psychiatry, the terms depression or depressed refer to sadness and other related emotions and behaviours. It can be thought of as either a disease or a syndrome....
and depressive symptoms. Nonetheless, boredom proneness has been found to be as strongly correlated with attentional lapses as with depression. Although boredom is often viewed as a trivial and mild irritant, proneness to boredom has been linked to a very diverse range of possible psychological, physical, educational, and social problems.
William
