EXPERIMENTAL-MODEL AND TREATMENT OF NEUROTIC DEPRESSION

Learned helplessness is at present widely accepted as a model for depression. Depression, however, is a symptom-complex that has many causes. Three general causal categories are distinguished-normal, neurotic and endogenous. Neurotic depressions comprise the main clinical category whose causation is primarily external. This paper shows that neurotic depression is evidently a function of conditioned anxiety response habits that finds a paradigm in experimental neuroses, not in learned helplessness. Both experimental and clinical neurotic depressions are overcome by deconditioning anxiety. In a sample of 25 cases treated by the deconditioning of anxiety, 22 recovered from their depressions; and the recoveries were found to have endured in the 19 of them who were followed up for at least 6 months. © 1979.