Research data · Disease model and test
Learned helplessness in depression research
From 2021 to 2025, 49 animal research papers on depression mentioned learned helplessness in their title or abstract.
That is 40% fewer than the 82 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on depression that mention any of the 90 tests we count rose 55%.
Papers by year
Animal research papers on depression that mention learned helplessness, by year, 2001 to 2026
The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.
- Papers in a full year
- 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2001 | 8 |
| 2002 | 7 |
| 2003 | 7 |
| 2004 | 11 |
| 2005 | 10 |
| 2006 | 4 |
| 2007 | 11 |
| 2008 | 14 |
| 2009 | 11 |
| 2010 | 17 |
| 2011 | 19 |
| 2012 | 17 |
| 2013 | 15 |
| 2014 | 18 |
| 2015 | 13 |
| 2016 | 30 |
| 2017 | 18 |
| 2018 | 19 |
| 2019 | 13 |
| 2020 | 11 |
| 2021 | 14 |
| 2022 | 8 |
| 2023 | 10 |
| 2024 | 11 |
| 2025 | 6 |
| 2026 (part year) | 6 |
Which species the papers used
Each bar is a share of the 49 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.
Species
“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the species this chart names.
Tests mentioned alongside learned helplessness
Each bar is one test, with how many of the 49 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 30 (61%) mention no other test.
The 10 tests these papers mention most
Which papers count
A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions learned helplessness in its title or abstract, and studies depression.
We tell whether a paper studies depression from its MeSH terms, the subject headings the National Library of Medicine adds when it indexes a paper. For a paper without MeSH terms, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model. A paper that mentions the test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low.
The page on depression research names the subject headings we count as depression. Download the test list for the search terms we used for learned helplessness, or the paper list for the PubMed ID of every paper behind these counts. Our main page, Behavioral tests in published research, has the full method and each source's terms of use.
More tests and disease models
Every pairing of a disease model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.
Papers on depression that mention other tests
- Forced swim test 1,822 papers
- Sucrose preference test 1,102 papers
- Tail suspension test 983 papers
- Open field 952 papers
- Elevated plus maze 599 papers
- Morris water maze 181 papers
- Novelty-suppressed feeding 146 papers
- Novel object recognition 134 papers
- Light-dark box 100 papers
- Y-maze 86 papers
- Splash test 78 papers
- Social interaction test 72 papers
- Marble burying 53 papers
- Fear conditioning 45 papers
- Rotarod 44 papers
- Passive avoidance 43 papers
- Treadmill running 42 papers
- Von Frey test 41 papers
- Wheel running 39 papers
The page on learned helplessness counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on depression research ranks the tests by their papers on depression.
How to cite
APA
ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Learned helplessness in depression research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/depression/learned-helplessness
BibTeX
@misc{conductscience_depression_learned_helplessness_2026,
author = {{ConductScience}},
title = {Learned helplessness in depression research},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/depression/learned-helplessness},
note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}Learned helplessness apparatus in our store
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