LEARNED HELPLESSNESS

Few people in ShelterWorld have much control over their daily lives and when that is coupled with demeaning treatment at places like the Sally or the Jackson Center, many can become depressed due to learned helplessness:


Learned helplessness is a psychological condition where a human or animal has learned that it is helpless. It feels that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result it will stay passive when the situation is unpleasant or harmful.

It is a well-established principle in psychology, a description of the effect of inescapable punishment (such as electrical shock) on animal (and by extension, human) behaviour. Learned helplessness may also occur in everyday situations where continued failure may inhibit somebody from experiencing agency in the future, leading to many forms of depression. The theory was developed by Martin Seligman and S.F. Meir through experiments going back to 1965.