Summary: Dr. Paul Meier, psychiatrist, best selling author, and founder of The Meier Clinics joins Melanie Vann and Kristin Sunanta Walker to discuss Learned Helplessness. Learned helplessness is behavior typical of a human or an animal and occurs where the subject endures repeatedly painful or otherwise aversive stimuli which it is unable to escape or avoid. After such experience, the organism often fails to learn or accept "escape" or "avoidance" in new situations where such behavior would likely be effective. In other words, the organism learned that it is helpless in situations where there is a presence of aversive stimuli, has accepted that it has lost control, and thus gives up trying. Such an organism is said to have acquired learned helplessness. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses may result from such real or perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation. www.meierclinics.com
