The other day in my psychology lecture, I learned about something called “Learned Helplessness.” Learned helplessness is simply defined as a behavioural condition in which someone believes that no matter what they do they cannot change their environment they are in. It is mostly found in clinical depression or where people felt like the lost all control.

After writing my essay on suicide rates for Aboriginals and correlation to lost of cultural identity, I found that a few of my articles would highlight that Aboriginals had feelings of “helplessness.” I believe that this is the case for most Aboriginal communities. That throughout the years and generations of Aboriginal Families, and the conditions that they were either born or raised in, that certain communities believe that there is nothing they can do to change their environment. This can be true for isolated communities, and not just Aboriginal communities but also remote, northern communities.

I believe that we need to help these communities UNlearn this behaviour. We need to help them learn coping techniques/mechanisms, and goal setting and planning techniques, just to name a few. These two techniques I know are techniques that have helped me when I felt so helpless and thought that I could not control anything. It took me a long time to notice that but I did.

Once again, I was excited to finish my essay, now I just have to wait to receive my mark! Shall report later!