Thursday, July 17, 2008

Some dogs do not want to have their day: Learned helplessness

4 comments:

Tiny Seal said...

i think depression goes deeper than having a pessimistic viewpoint. Teaching new explanatory style to the depressed sounds rosy, but i dont think just doing that will help heal completely.

Unawoken said...

This forms the basis for psychological counseling. It is not easy, but psychological counseling aims at changing the inner script, the story that one tells oneself to cope with life.

Anonymous said...

Learned Optimism suggests a way to overcome depression with new optimistic belief.
But this suggestion looks as momentarily self-help to make them think/feel better "optimistic" way but not helping ppl to think realistically to understand the problem so they can work on improving.

Even though depressed person answer is 1) I am stupid.
Making them think towards reality will help them.The below 2 answers makes more realistic sense for a depressed person to understand why he failed in maths than just being optimistic about it.
2) I'm not good in math. or
8) I didn't have time to study .
How can I improve on it? How can I make time ot study so
I dont fail next time.

That's why I dont think just by being optimistic/reading few jokes makes a person come out of the depression.It may help them feel better momentarily.

Unawoken said...

Behaviour and inner-narration (if you do not stick exclusively with behavioral psych) share an iterative two-way relationship.
This article explains the classical basis for learned helplessness. It is the first step for further development in cognitive therapy. (That is, this article should not be read as a complete thesis. It is an introduction.)
Depression has a whole lot to do with the inner narration and general coping behaviour. When people change the way they cope with stressors, they change their overall behaviour.
1 through 9 could all have been right answers. But if you have a preference for some of these answers over other most of the time, then you are biased.