Learned helplessness theory has been recognized as a psychology of the powerlesss. It provides an insight into the world of the poor, the oppressed, and handicapped; indeed, all who regulary confronted by life events or traumatic events beyond their c...
Learned helplessness theory has been recognized as a psychology of the powerlesss. It provides an insight into the world of the poor, the oppressed, and handicapped; indeed, all who regulary confronted by life events or traumatic events beyond their control. Among the helping professions, social work has been focused on the interactions between the individual and the social enviornment and has always had a unique commitment the powerless people. For this reason, learned helplessness theory gives practical implications for social work.
The purpose of this study is to review the learned helpless theory and to discuss implications and crucial theoretical issues of the theory within social work practice. In order to prevent and overcome the negative effects of helplessness or powerlessness, learned helplessness theory provides social worker three intervention strategies; environmental enrichment and resignation attribution for prevention, reattributional training to change negative attribution in treatment with vulnerable clients, and forced response and repeated exposure in controllable experience for motivative, cognitive, and behavioral immunization in therapy with helpless clients. In addition, social workers needs to combine cognitive-behavioral therapy-assertive training, social skill training, self-efficacy training etc- when applying the theory to practice.