What is your opinion on the "learned helplessness" theory? "Another theory regarding intrapsychic causes attributes depression to so-called "learned helplessness." This theory grew out of research studies on animal learning, comparing dogs that were able to escape from mild electric shocks to dogs that could not escape. The researchers discovered that the dogs who could not escape the mild shocks became passive; later, when they were put in a situation in which they could escape the shocks, they made no attempt to do so but simply lay on their stomachs and whimpered. The animals had, in short, learned to be helpless; they had learned during the first part of the experiment that nothing they had done had any effect on the shocks. Applied to human beings, this theory holds that people tend to become depressed when they have had long-term experiences of helplessness. Later, when the children have become adults, they do not see themselves as grownups with some control over their lives; they continue to react to setbacks or losses with the same feelings of helplessness that they had as children, and they become depressed." Excerpt from: http://www.minddisorders.com/Kau-Nu/Major-depressive-disorder.html Thanks, Abner
