Is there a term for the phenomenon of people becoming desensitized to people's suffering? See body for full question

An alternative to desensitized is inured

verb (used with object), in·ured, in·ur·ing.

to accustom to hardship, difficulty, pain, etc.; toughen or harden; habituate (usually followed by to): inured to cold.

The two words mean essentially the same thing, however desensitization has more of a clinical tone to it.

Example usage:

How does the spectacle of the sufferings of others (via television or newsprint) affect us? Are viewers inured--or incited--to violence by the depiction of cruelty? In Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag takes a fresh look at the representation of atrocity--from Goya's The Disasters of War to photographs of the American Civil War, lynchings of blacks in the South, and the Nazi death camps, to contemporary horrific images of Bosnia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, and New York City on September 11, 2001.

The simple adjective numb is often used to describe the person who has been desensitized in this fashion. "She had become numb to their sufferings."

They could see their own death and the death of thousands of others ahead of them, but they had become numb to suffering, perhaps numb to moral discourse.

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