Learned Helplessness and The Environmental Theory of Depression

Learned Helplessness is a state of the mind in which the person that suffers it is resigned to something. It involves a punishment to the person, and when that person sees that he or she cant do anything about it, he or she resigns him or herself to that punishment. This makes the person not even try to avoid it because he or she knows that nothing can change it. The environmental theory of depression can be related to learned helplessness. The environmental theory states that depression is caused by factors out of ourselves. This means that things like the ones that happen to us during the day, and the persons that interact with us are the causes. Other causes of depression that are out of ourself, meaning that we don't have any type of control over, may be school, work, the amount of stress we have, or the loss a loved one.
The relationship between the environmental theory of depression and learned helplessness is very simple. When a person feels nothing can be done about a punishment, it is because usually someone that is not him or her, but someone else, is punishing the person. This is exactly what the environmental theory of depression states, that anything, this includes school, friends, family, etc. or anything out of our power is the cause of depression. The relation is too simple and obvious. The only way in which it woul not work would be if a person punishes him or herself, and falls under learned helplessness by his or herself. This would make the cause of depression the own person, and this would be considered another theory of depression. It would be more like the cognitive theory, which states that it is one's own thoughts and actions that cause depression.

The Environmental Theory



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There are causes of depression that are concerned with factors out of ourselves. They are actually not related to our brain, genes, or anything taking place within us. Instead, the environmental theory states that depression is caused by things that happen in the course of our everyday lives. These things may be traumatic events, stressful situations at home, school, or work, or the loss of a loved one.



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Scientists have always known that experiences, things we have done, things done to us, or things we see done to others, affect our minds. They can change our minds completely. The way we relate to others, how we are brought up, and our stress levels affect our reactions and actions in the future. It is actually not known for sure whether strass can actually depress a person. It is more likelly for someone to be depressed when everything seems fine in his or her life and there is little or no stress.


http://www.allaboutdepression.com/cau_04.html

The Cognitive Theory

The constant failures of behaviorists to take feelings seriously led to this theory's rise to prominence. The idea for this movement was to integrate mental events into the behavioral framework, rather than reject the behavioral principals. This theory suggests that depression is caused by maladaptive, faulty, or irrational cognitions(an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. These take the form of thoughts and judgments that are not necessarily coherent.



http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/research/emotion/cemhp/images/depression.jpg

The Cognitive theory suggests that depressed people think differently than no-depressed people, which causes more depression. There are many theorists that have different views of this theory. Some think that it is the bad and negative thoughts that lead directly to depression. There may be a direct relationship between the amount of negative thoughts and the severity of their symptoms of depression. In other words, if you only have negative thoughts, you will be very depressed.



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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition
http://www.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=doc&id=13006&cn=5

The Biological Theory


There has been some evidence that depresion can be genetic shown recently. Lots of research and studying of the brain and genetics is being done todetermine whether an individual is likely to inherit depression. Most of the research that has been published though, is about bipolar depression. However, it is believd that since unipolar depression can be inherited, it is a biological disease.


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Other evidence that depression is a biological illness is that there are higher than normal discharges of cortisol in the adrenal glands of depressives. Also, there are eccentric wave patterns that can be shown with electroencephalograms. The most known theory of this aspect of depression is that the neurobiological basis of depression is a shortage of noradrenalin and serotonin in the synaptic clefts. Due to this theory the serotonin system is the most researched and widely studied, though there are many other neurotransmiter systems that play an important role in depresion.


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http://www.holysmoke.org/sdhok/why-dep.htm
http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514270215/html/x294.html

The following video explains what depression is, some of the symptoms to recognize it, how doctors diegnose it, and the current treatments available for people with depression.