Apathy is one of the few symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which affect about 70% pf patients during all stages of the disease.
It also can happen in patients with dementia. Depression is very often mistaken for apathy.
One of the medicines which is prescribed to these patients is Provigil. One of the reasons for that is that Provigil is very well tolerated when is taken with other medicines. This is a very important thing for aged patients, as they usually take lots of medications.
Potentially it can also be used to treat people who did not respond well to the treatment by antidepressants.