As a dog lover and advocate of training with positive reinforcement, I know about the learned helplessness. When people work with their dogs with aversive methods and tell me that it helps, I always tell them about the learned helplessness. I talk to them about how depressed their dogs look and why their training methods are not successful in the long term. Which means that some dogs break out of their learned helplessness and react aggressively.
In the future, with more and more studies on this topic, I hope more pet owners and parents will be aware of this and not put their loved ones in that state of mind.
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Thank you so much for that comment, I totally agree with you. As you say, with more ethical studies and raised awareness, hopefully more people will be able to nurture their loved ones without imbuing them with these harmful mental states.
I'd read about a "child training" book that was popular amongst conservative evangelical parents, and this sprung to mind as I was reading about learned helplessness. It's a concept I vaguely remember from my school days, but I'd not realised that it was also a potential model for depression and anxiety disorders, which is the angle I've come at this from.
Child 'training' book triggers backlash
I just looked up the book and I'm shocked something like this is sold in such high numbers....terrible. Treating a child like this can not only lead to depression and anxieties, but even to a dissociative identity disorder. It is so easy to understand that nobody, neither human nor animal, can learn something when they are put under such a stress. I really don't get it that something like this is seen as useful.