Hearing That Things Can Change Helps Teens Dodge Depression [NPR.org]

As a professional educator there are tremendous implications related to such findings. It brings to mind the research done by Martin Seligman and his colleagues which resulted in (*among a number of things) a construct known as "learned helplessness." For a great and concise overview of Seligman's original research, view Dr. John Medina's online multi-media resources for his book Brain Rules (Pear Press, 2008).  Here is an excerpt from Brain Rules that speaks to self-efficacy, resilience, and why an otherwise healthy German Shepard would move from active resistance to painful stimuli to a passive, inactive agent in the presence of painful stimuli:

It is, by any measure, a thoroughly rotten experiment.

Here is this beautiful German shepherd, lying in one corner of a metal box, whimpering. He is receiving  painful electric shocks, stimuli that should leave him howling in pain. Oddly enough, the dog could easily get out. The other side of the box is perfectly insulated from shocks, and only a low barrier separates the two sides. Though the dog could jump over to safety when the whim strikes him, the whim doesn’t strike him. Ever. He just lies down in the corner of the electric side, whimpering with each jarring jolt. He must be physically removed by the experimenter to be relieved of the experience.

What has happened to that dog?

A few days before entering the box, the animal was strapped to a restraining harness rigged with electric wires, inescapably receiving the same painful shock day and night. And at first he didn’t just stand there taking it, he reacted. He howled in pain. He urinated. He strained mightily against his harness in an increasingly desperate attempt to link some behavior of his with the cessation of the pain. But it was no use. As the hours and even days ticked by, his resistance eventually subsided. Why? The dog began to receive a very clear message: The pain was not going to stop; the shocks were going to be forever. There was no way out. Even after the dog had been released from the harness and placed into the metal box with the escape route, he could no longer understand his options. Indeed, most learning had been shut down, and that’s probably the worst part of all.

Those of you familiar with psychology already know I am describing a famous set of experiments begun in the late 1960s by legendary psychologist Martin Seligman. He coined the term “learned helplessness” to describe both the perception of inescapability and its associated cognitive collapse.

Online source: https://www.inkling.com/read/b...1st/chapter-8/stress

As an educator working in special education for 17 years, I have always been dismayed that educators would refer to any student's behavior as "learned helpless" in a way that implied the student's behavior could be equated with "laziness." Go back to Seligman's research and you do not get the impression that the dog who has been shocked into submission and lost his sense of self-efficacy  was now "lazy." True, he no long moves at the entrance of painful stimuli where he once howled and frothed at the entrance of such pain. But lazy?

I think that one of the greatest challenges facing educators and domestic caregivers today is to accurately understand the role of labor/effort, self-agency, self-regulation, the value of informative feedback that is provided in meaningful ways, and the right to learning conditions conducive to 2nd/3rd/4th (etc) attempts to take action upon the world in their immediate context.  Depression - and all its potential entailments - is real. What is unreal are situations where those an individual needs most to NOT administer any more "shocks" simply up the voltage, increase the stress levels, decrease the range of possible outcomes, and then describe the now quite rational behavior of the pained individual as someone who simply has chosen laziness. 

The symptoms of depression are hastened and exacerbated, however, by those in positions of care who simply do not understand what they are witnessing. We, as Dr. Medina points out, should be increasing our curiosity and asking - "What has happened to this poor dog (imp. student)?"

We should not be surprised that research supports the conclusion that when given the learning conditions necessary to make maximal sense (ie, enough) out of painful circumstances and choices/options for action, that individuals are then able to abate the symptoms of depression through self-efficacy, self-regulation, and exercising their human need for agency. Our schools, families, communities (etc) are all at the best when we step back from what we are seeing and take a "learning stance" - and ask not, "What's wrong with this individual?" - but genuinely try to understand, "What must have happenedto this individual?"

I would encourage readers to also read Dr. Carolyn Dweck's research on efficacy and her book, Growth Mindset, which outlines a great number of topics which have implications for care providers in virtually any setting.