Behavior Analysis offers many explanations for the phenomenon called depression, one of
which refers to the model of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is defined as a
learning disability which results from exposure to uncontrollable aversive stimuli. As one of
the products of this exposure, there would be the acquisition of behavioral patterns common
to those observed in depressed individuals, like inactivity. Because of the parallel among the
effects of the experience of uncontrollability on the behavioral repertoire in humans and nonhumans,
learned helplessness has been suggested as an animal model of depression. In the
literature references to the uncontrollability experience are often found in association with
learned helplessness, whose occurrence is strictly linked to that condition. Uncontrollability
also seems relevant to the installation of responses identified with depression. In this paper,
the definitions of uncontrollability reported by publications in the field of clinical and
experimental behavior psychology were described discussing the relevance of this concept in
functional explanations of depression in Behavior Analysis and its possible contribution to a
model of clinical depression in the light of this approach. The relationship between
uncontrollability and depression is treated from five analysis categories: 1) Variability of
investigated phenomena, results and definitions offered; 2) Differential effects of
uncontrollability in the face of aversive and appetitive stimuli; 3) Cross-sectional approaches
of the relevant variables: installers x maintainers, historical x current, exclusive x
superimposed on other phenomena; 4) Uncontrollability in humans: numerous assumptions,
scarce empirical evidence and verbal contingencies; 5) Treatment of depression: points of
contact and distance in face of empirical investigation. The different uses of the concept of
uncontrollability are distinguished, indicating how the same verbal topography issued by
various authors is controlled by different events. Relevant variables to the generality of
learned helplessness as the experimental model and animal equivalent of depression are
discussed, justifying the need for more research into aspects such as the correspondence
between the concept of uncontrollability and the experimentally established condition in the
laboratory, the effects of different types of uncontrollable stimulation, the production of
learned helplessness in humans and involvement of verbal processes and the different effects
of pre-aversive signaling of uncontrollable stimuli. It is noted that, in general, the behavioranalytic
treatment of depression consists of procedures which focus on teaching that
responding controls the environment and can provide reinforcements. Also, the role of
uncontrollability in the installation of depression is analyzed, concluding, ultimately, that it is
a sufficient, yet not necessary condition for the occurrence and/or maintenance of the
phenomenon.
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