"Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which a human being or an animal has learned to believe that a situation is helpless. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances. Learned helplessness theory is the view that depression results from a perceived lack of control over the events in one's life, which may result from prior exposure to (actually or apparently) uncontrollable negative events."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lear...lplessness