Learned helplessness is a behavior in response to an uncontrollable and aversive stress. In this situation, animals will experience a deficit in emotional expression, associative learning, and behavioral coping. In other words, in response to this kind of stress, animals will essentially “give up” on trying to escape due to a sense of powerlessness.

Learned helplessness is believed to be one of the contributing causes to depression. This model produces responses similar to the symptoms of depression and is a reliable test[3]. While this model has been applied to a variety of animals, our focus is going to be on mice.