What is the learned helplessness model of depression?

One of Dr. Seligman's major contributions to psychology was the development of the "learned helplessness model of depression," as an animal model is known. During the 1960s, Dr. Seligman discovered that animals could be trained to be helpless. What significance do these experiments have for depression?

Seligman's learned helplessness model became an effective way to test antidepressant drugs. Basically, when animals that had learned to be helpless were given antidepressant drugs, they would unlearn helplessness and start exerting control over their environment. Scientists discovered that when animals learned to be helpless, this learning resulted in alteration of brain monoamine content: e.g., it lowered brain serotonin levels.

The drugs would restore proper monoamine balance and alter the animal's behavior. Researchers also found that when animals with learned helplessness were taught how to gain control over their environment, brain chemistry also normalized. The alteration in brain monoamine content in the animals with learned helplessness mirrors the altered monoamine content in human depression.

What all the research indicates is that learned helplessness in animals and depression in humans can be improved either by antidepressant drugs or through retraining. Most physicians quickly look to drugs to alter brain chemistry, but helping patients gain greater control over their lives will actually produce even greater biochemical changes. One of the most powerful techniques for producing the necessary biochemical changes in the brain of depressed individuals is teaching them to be more optimistic.

Outside the laboratory setting, Dr. Seligman discovered that the factor determining how people would react to an uncontrollable event, either "bad" or "good," was their explanatory style - the way they explained events. Optimistic people were immune to becoming helpless and depressed. However, individuals who were pessimistic were extremely likely to become depressed when something went wrong in their lives.

Dr. Seligman and other researchers also found a direct correlation between an individual's level of optimism and the likelihood of developing not only clinical depression but other illnesses as well. In one of the longer studies, patients were followed for a total of 35 years. Optimists rarely became depressed, but pessimists were extremely likely to develop depression and other psychological disturbances.

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