LEARNED HELPLESSNESS Learned Helplessness

Learned Helplessness is an important concept to understand because it provides a foundation in theory developments. This concept is considered a personality trait of one who feels hopeless; their responses are unimportant and lose control of external environment. Understanding the definition will help health professionals in nursing and psychology. In both disciplines, understanding learned helplessness will guide health care professionals to use evidence-based teaching and improved theoretical understanding to help promote improved clinical outcomes related to learned helplessness. The process of analyzing this concept involves the way of knowing through systemic reviews and meta-analyses research. Through analysis, attributes are defined to help understand the relationship to the concept. This plays a major role in theory building. This concept analysis will provide a foundation for today’s research foundation for future research. LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 3 Learned Helplessness What is a concept and why is it important? Concepts provide a foundation in theory construction. They are considered to be key components in theory that provides a foundation for nursing. Learned helplessness is the general concept I have chosen to further explore. While researching the definition of learned helplessness and relating it to certain diseases such as anorexia, it created much interest for me to explore this concept. Although, anorexia has never been topic of interest for me in the past, it really brought interest to me during my learned helplessness research. Definition My research started with defining learned helplessness and identifying synonyms. What is learned helplessness? Learned helplessness is considered a concept. Learned helplessness is considered a personality trait of one who feels hopeless, their responses are unimportant and loses control of external environment. Some learned helplessness synonyms include disorder, weakness, poor health, inadequacy, incapability and uselessness. The concept learned helplessness is used in both nursing and psychology disciplines. Both nursing and psychology professionals should screen patients within a specific age category and physically and psychologically assess individuals for possible symptoms associate with learned helplessness. Follow-up assessments should be mandatory if initial assessments lead to suspicion (Currin & Schmidt, 2005, p. 621). It can also be used in sociology. But, my focus is on the nursing and psychology disciplines. Nursing In nursing, learned helplessness is a concept important to understand for certain diseases. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia is derived from learned helplessness. There is LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 4 evidence of a direct relationship between anxiety, depression and eating disorders (Vince & Walker, 2008). Nurse practitioners’ understanding of learned helplessness concept resulting from depression and anxiety will help to improve clinical outcomes. Discovering the root to anxiety and depression such as history of abuse and dysfunctional background will help the nurse to understand the concept (Vince & Walker, 2008). Learned helplessness is the foundation of eating disorders and other diseases. Behavior related to anorexia usually involves a personal search strategy with specific self-challenging confrontations that externally display as a positive self-esteem behavior to compensate for the true feeling of learned helplessness. This type of behavior is very hard to recognize and treat from a nursing standpoint. Nurses need to encourage the patient to engage in a therapeutic search activity in other areas to help with increasing their self-esteem that will help with the healing process (Rotenberg, 2000). Early interventions from health care professionals play a major role with potential long-term effects of psychosis (Currin & Schmidt, 2005, p. 612). Psychology In psychology, learned helplessness’ attributes stem from this area of practice. Attributes associated to learned helplessness are low self-esteem, locus of control, history of abuse, poor caregiver relationship, negative self-beliefs, socio-economical pressures, perfectionism, anger, hostility, maladaptive coping style, anxiety and depression (Vince & Walker, 2008). Usually, learning the root of certain diseases associated to learned helplessness begins with psychological treatments focusing on these attributes. The concept learned helplessness is thought to be the psychobiological base of depression (Rotenberg, 2000, p. 89). Early intervention for psychosis is imperative or the brain will experience a deadly effect (Currin LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 5 & Schmidt, 2005, p. 612). Psychiatric basic treatment care involves treating untreated psychosis in early stages to prevent this deadly effect (Currin & Schmidt, 2005, p. 612). Aim of the Analysis The aim of my concept learned helplessness analysis is to learn more about theory development to help improve patient clinical outcomes. Patient education derived from evidenced based practice. Hopefully, through evidence-based practice teaching and improved theoretical understanding, it will improve my understanding and clinical care outcomes regarding learned helplessness. After researching diseases associated to learned helplessness, anorexia seems to draw my interest the most. Theoretical approaches have changed with anorexia treatment. I want explore the different theories with my concept and the relationship to anorexia. Analysis of Concept How is a way of knowing related to the concept of learned helplessness? Ways of knowing involves experimental knowledge or experimental opinion using integrated reviews, systemic reviews or meta-analyses as primary sources for research projects. These analyses are used to dissect a concept into multiple parts to grasp a better understanding. Each part of this analytical process is evaluated individually and defined with its relationship to the whole concept. The analysis is more helpful if previous research data is available. Attributes are characteristics that make concepts unique. These unique characteristics allow us to differentiate concept and choose them based off their attributes Analysis allows concepts to be dissected, reshaped and molded to create a new theory to improve knowledge accuracy. The dissection of the concept to identify the function or structure is the purpose of an analysis. This formal exercise is considered precise and rigorous with a tentative result. Tentativeness is important because of the different concept attributes derived from scientific and LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 6 basic knowledge from different people can change often. Concepts and analysis both change throughout time. Concept analysis provides a foundation for tomorrow’s research. This is the reason tentativeness is important. Concept analysis is a phase that plays a major role in theory building. The steps to concept analysis include concept selection, concept aims or purposes, antecedents, attributes, model selection, identify type of cases (invented, contrary, related, illegitimate or borderline), identifying antecedents and consequences and defining empirical referents. Concept selection involves choosing a manageable concept of interest that is important to further research. The selected concept is learned helplessness. The specific concept of learned helplessness is anorexia. Please see Figure 1 for a representation of the process in the analysis. Figure 1. Concept map demonstrating the concept analysis process. LEARNED HELPLESSNESS 7