Explored prevention of learned helplessness through the use of thermal biofeedback training and varied explanations of performance. It was found that only in the biofeedback group receiving accurate feedback was there any prevention of the subsequent development of learned helplessness behavior. (Author)

Tested reformulated learned helplessness theory of depression with adolescent inpatients (N=63) diagnosed as depressed, conduct disordered, or both. Adolescents with major depressive diagnosis differed from nondepressed adolescents with significantly lower attributional style scores for positive events. Subjects who reported more severe depression…

Tested the hypothesis that psychological adjustment to epilepsy would be a joint function of subjects' (N=50) perceived repertoire of self-control skills and the extent to which they were exposed to uncontrollable seizures. Results showed that high-resourceful epileptics exposed to lower frequencies of seizures coped better with their disability.…

Explored the relation between childhood sexual victimization experience and adult functioning. Victimized women differed from nonvictims on: (a) childhood family and social experiences; (b) adult attributional style; and (c) level of depression, psychological distress, self-esteem, and sexual problems. Suggests that the sexually victimized women's…

Examined relationships among sex roles, sex, and learned helplessness. Students were given unsolvable concept-formation problems or solvable concept-formation problems. Feminine-sex-typed and masculine-sex-typed students showed cognitive and motivational deficits as well as dysphoric mood in helpless conditions. Helpless androgynous students…

Gotlib and Asarnow suggest that learned helplessness may not adequately model clinical depression. They reply to Rohsenow's criticism that Gotlib and Asarnow's conclusions are unwarranted because the null hypothesis is not demonstrated by a single study and because adequate diagnostic criteria are not presented. (Author/BEF)

A continuous assessment and a categorical diagnosis of the presence (i.e., flourishing) and the absence (i.e., languishing) of mental health were proposed and applied to the Midlife in the United States study data, a nationally representative sample of adults between the ages of 25 and 74 years (N = 3,032). Confirmatory factor analyses supported…