Learned Helplessness Theory Of Depression Research Articles

Could implantable cardioverter defibrillators provide a human model supporting the learned helplessness theory of depression?

Affective symptoms were examined retrospectively in 25 patients following placement of implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICD) which can produce intermittent shocks without warning in response to cardiac ventricular arrhythmias. The number of ICD random, uncontrollable discharge shocks and pre-ICD history of psychological distress (i.e., depression and/or anxiety) were documented in all patients using a demographics questionnaire and a standardized behavioral/psychological symptoms questionnaire (i.e., Symptom Checklist-90 Revised). ICD patients were dichotomized into two groups: those without a history of psychological distress prior to ICD ( n = 18) and those with a history of psychological distress prior to ICD ( n = 7). In ICD patients without a prior history, results indicated that quantity of ICD discharge shocks was significantly predictive of current reported depression ( r = 0.45, p = 0.03) and current reported anxiety ( r = 0.51, p = 0.02). Conversely, in patients with a reported history of psychological distress, there was no significant relationship found between quantity of discharge shocks and current reported depression or anxiety. This study may provide evidence in support of a human model of learned helplessness in that it supports the notion that exposure to an unavoidable and inescapable aversive stimulus was found to be related to patients’ reported depression. Further studies may wish to prospectively consider a larger sample as well as a more comprehensive assessment of premorbid psychological symptoms.

The Causal Relations of Attributions for Interpersonal Events to Depression: A Prospective Longitudinal Study

The causal relations between attributions for naturally occurring interpersonal events and depression were examined using a prospective longitudinal design. Partial empirical support was obtained for the hypothesis that self-deprecating attributional tendencies accompany a depressed state. Currently depressed subjects made more internal attributions for unpleasant interpersonal events than did normal controls but did not reliably differ in this tendency from nondepressed psychopathology controls. The hypotheses that negative attributions temporally precede the onset of depression or persist beyond symptomatic recovery were not supported. An evaluation of the diathesis–stress prediction of the reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression revealed that neither attributions for unpleasant interpersonal events, life stress, nor interactions between attributions and life stress were predictive of future depressive symptomatology. Implications for the reformulated model and future research pertaining ...

Attributional style in clinically depressed and conduct disordered adolescents.

We tested the reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression with adolescent inpatients (N = 63) who were diagnosed by Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980) criteria as depressed, or conduct disordered, or both. Adolescents with major depression diagnoses differed from nondepressed adolescents with significantly lower attributional style scores for positive events. The study also evaluated the relation of self-reported depression, anxiety, and social maladjustment to attributional style. Subjects who reported more severe depression had a significantly lower composite score for internal, stable, and global attributions for positive events. The composite of internal, stable, and global attributions for negative events was not significantly related to either diagnosed or self-reported depression.

The Cognitive, Learned-Helplessness and Hopelessness Theories of Depression: A Review with Implications for Counsellors

Abstract Four theories of depression and the Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) are described and their implications for counselling discussed. Recent research has focused upon the testing of the diathesis-stress component of the reformulated learned-helplessness theory of depression, and in particular upon the role which a hypothesised depressogenic causal attributional style towards events in general, and/or ‘depressive attributions' towards specific events, play in the development of depression. It is suggested that the recently revised version of this theory — the hopelessness theory of depression — is both a more fruitful area of future research and of more interest to the counsellor, since it emphasises the role which attributions and other cognitive factors play in the maintenance and prevention of depression, rather than concentrating on a continued search for a cause.

Generality of the relationship between attributions and depression across attributional dimensions and across samples

Two hypotheses implicit in the use of composite measures of attributions in tests of learned helplessness theory (but not implicit in the theory itself) were tested: the hypotheses that relationships between depression and the three types of attributions are equal in magnitude, and linear. To test these hypotheses, data from three published studies of the reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teasdale, 1978) were reanalyzed. The hypothesis that internal, stable, and global attributions are equally related to depression was tested and rejected. Increases in internal attributions were related to depression in one sample: increases in global attributions for negative events were related to depression in two samples: stability attributions for negative events were unrelated to depression. The relationship between attributions and depression was nonlinear .in one of the three populations studied. Finally, a third hypothesis was tested: the hypothesis that the relationship between attributions and depression is equal across samples. The hypothesis was rejected: attributions for negative events were more highly related to depression in a psychiatric sample than in normal populations. Implications of these findings for learned helplessness theory and for the use of composite measures of attributional style are discussed.

Attributional correlates of depression: An interactional model including problem solving

The present investigation sought to evaluate the relationships between causal attributions, problem solving, and depressive symptomatology. We hypothesized that problem solving would function as a moderator variable between causal ascriptions and depression. To test this, 128 undergraduate students completed the Beck Depression Inventory, the Attributional Style Questionnaire, and the Problem-Solving Inventory. Results from a multiple regression analysis indicated that problem-solving scores were significant predictors of depression even after attributions were taken into account. Further, a negative attributions × problemsolving interaction was also found to be significantly related to depression scores. Causal ascriptions concerning positive events on the ASQ were found to be unrelated to BDI scores. Whereas these findings are in partial support of the reformulated learned-helplessness theory of depression, the results suggest the need to consider the interaction between causal attributions and problem-solving ability with respect to the study of depression.

Self-help and self-care in chronic illness.

Some cultural and epidemiologic factors leading to a new emphasis on self-care in chronic illness are reviewed and current applications of self-care in medicine are illustrated with examples. Emotional and behavioral aspects of self-care programs are detailed with special attention to compliance, family involvement, and new roles for health professionals. Theoretic implications of the self-help orientation are related to the learned helplessness theory of depression.

Perception of reinforcement and psychomotor retardation in depressed patients.

Two groups of endogenous and reactive unipolar depressives were compared with two nondepressed groups, psychiatric patients and normal controls, on skill and chance task expectancy changes, psychomotor retardation measures, the Rotter externality, the Buss-Durkee Hostility, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire scores. There were no differences between the groups on the expectancy changes on skill task. This finding is not consistent with Seligman's learned helplessness theory of depression. Depressed patients scored more poorly on psychomotor speed tests. The scores on these tests were correlated with the ratings of the aspired-to performance, which is consistent with Beck's cognitive theory of depression.

Depression and the generation of complex hypotheses in the judgment of contingency

This experiment tests the hypothesis that relative to nondepressed college students, depressed college students will underestimate the potential amount of control they can exert over an environmental outcome when they must generate a complex hypothesis in order to exert control, but not when the complex hypothesis is generated for them. Following the method of Alloy and Abramson (1979b), depressed and nondepressed students' judgments of response-outcome contingency were assessed in either a ‘self-generated’ or an ‘experimenter-generated’ condition. In the ‘self-generated’ condition, subjects generated and tested potential hypotheses for controlling the outcome themselves. In the ‘experimenter-generated’ condition, the experimenter generated a small set of potential hypotheses to be tested by the subject. Relative to nondepressed students, depressed students were less likely to perform the correct controlling response, received fewer rewards, and judged that they exerted less control over the outcome in the ‘self-generated’ condition. These results fail to support the ‘associative’ deficit of the learned helplessness theory of depression, but are consistent with the ‘motivational’ deficit of helplessness theory.

Does helplessness cause depression, or do only depressed people become helpless? Comment on Alloy and Abramson.

Alloy and Abramson reported that depressed people are accurate at assessing response-outcome contingencies, whereas normal people display various distortions. It is argued that such a finding causes problems for a learned helplessness theory of depression, because it suggests that people can only detect some of the conditions necessary for producing helplessness after they are already depressed. The presumed causal relation between helplessness and depression may be strengthened if one assumes that helplessness prevents the development of active hypothesis-testing strategies that would otherwise produced biased assessments of contingency.

Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: sadder but wiser?

How are humans' subjective judgments of contingencies related to objective contingencies? Work in social psychology and human contingency learning predicts that the greater the frequency of desired outcomes, the greater people's judgments of contingency will be. Second, the learned helplessness theory of depression provides both a strong and a weak prediction concerning the linkage between subjective and objective contingencies. According to the strong prediction, depressed individuals should underestimate the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes relative to the objective degree of contingency. According to the weak prediction, depressed individuals merely should judge that there is a smaller degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes than nondepressed individuals should. In addition, the present investigation deduced a new strong prediction from the helplessness theory: Nondepressed individuals should overestimate the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes relative to the objective degree of contingency. In the experiments, depressed and nondepressed students were present with one of a series of problems varying in the actual degree of contingency. In each problem, subjects estimated the degree of contingency between their responses (pressing or not pressing a button) and an environmental outcome (onset of a green light). Performance on a behavioral task and estimates of the conditional probability of green light onset associated with the two response alternatives provided additional measures for assessing beliefs about contingencies. Depressed students' judgments of contingency were surprisingly accurate in all four experiments. Nondepressed students, on the other hand, overestimated the degree of contingency between their responses and outcomes when noncontingent outcomes were frequent and/or desired and underestimated the degree of contingency when contingent outcomes were undesired. Thus, predictions derived from social psychology concerning the linkage between subjective and objective contingencies were confirmed for nondepressed students but not for depressed students. Further, the predictions of helplessness theory received, at best, minimal support. The learned helplessness and self-serving motivational bias hypotheses are evaluated as explanations of the results. In addition, parallels are drawn between the present results and phenomena in cognitive psychology, social psychology, and animal learning. Finally, implications for cognitive illusions in normal people, appetitive helplessness, judgment of contingency between stimuli, and learning theory are discussed.

A critical review of Seligman's laboratory experiments on learned helplessness and depression in humans.

Six laboratory experiments on learned helplessness and depression in humans reported by Seligman and his colleagues were critically reviewed. They were found to provide little or no support for the learned helplessness theory of depression. A number of methodologica l and conceptual problems were discussed. In conclusion, it was suggested that heuristic theories such as Seligman's should be closely examined before psychologists embark on an extensive series of experimental tests. Seligman and his colleagues have conducted a number of laboratory experiments on learned helplessness and depression in humans. The findings have been considered by Seligman to provide support for his learned helplessness theory of depression, and one will usually find the reports of these experiments listed in writings about the theory. I shall attempt to show that the findings of his experiments provide little or no support for his theory. This review will be restricted to the six articles reporting experiments with humans that have been conducted by Seligman and his colleagues.1 It would seem particularly important at this stage to evaluate Seligman's own thinking and work in this area rather than to venture into an evaluation' of work in other laboratories that may be based on a misinterpretation of Seligman's ideas. The present article has been divided into three sections. In the first section, methodological and conceptual problems specific to each experiment will be noted. In the second section, these problems and some additional problems common to all of the studies will be discussed more generally. In the third section, I shall comment on the popularity of the learned helplessness theory. I shall also comment on the importance of scrutinizing the