What is the concept of learned helplessness? Learned helplessness, is a mental state in which an organism forced to bear aversive stimuli, or stimuli that are painful or otherwise unpleasant, becomes unable or unwilling to avoid subsequent encounters with those stimuli, even if they are “escapable,” presumably because it has learned that it cannot ...They have “learned” that they are helpless in that situation and no longer try to change it, even when change is possible. How about you want to quit smoking, but you feel you can't, you want to lose weight, tried every diet plan known to  you  becoming passive in the face of traumadifficulty learning that responses can control traumacan increase in stress levels The equivalent of a plane’s worth of people still die every day’: If you wear a mask on a train or plane, while others don’t, will it protect you from COVID-19?