learned helplessness

British  

noun

1. the act of giving up trying as a result of consistent failure to be rewarded in life, thought to be a cause of depression

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Example Sentences

The sense of learned helplessness is real.

From Salon

But this is not a call to despair, or to embrace the comfort of learned helplessness or to take poison of hopium.

From Salon

Such learned helplessness would be a serious mistake.

From Slate

Learned helplessness becomes a survival mode.

From Salon

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s documentation of Stalinism strikes the same note: the elimination of a private existence away from politics, with the regime constantly forcing itself upon one’s attention, feeding each individual’s growing atomization and learned helplessness.

From Salon