People can die from simply giving up on life, a study has found.

Senior research fellow John Leach said “give-up-itis” is a genuine medical condition and can kill in just three weeks without help.

The disorder usually occurs after a person suffers severe trauma and feels there is no escape.

Leach said victims believe the “only rational outcome” is death.

He listed the stages as social withdrawal, lack of motivation and pain response, apathy and also psychogenic death — which he described as “disintegration of the person.”

Leach, from Portsmouth University in England, went on: “Psychogenic death is real. It isn’t suicide and isn’t linked to depression.”

He said losing the will to live could stem from a malfunction in brain circuitry that governs behavior.

Leach added: “Motivation is essential for coping with life and if that fails apathy is almost inevitable.”

“Reversing a give-up-itis slide to death tends to come when a survivor finds or recovers a sense of choice, of having some control — accompanied by licking their wounds and taking a renewed interest in life.”

Leach’s findings were published in Science Direct.