Thank you! If you have any questions regarding above scientific ideas, I'm happy to elaborate further. I myself am not a researcher, but I did review 50-100 research studies on stuttering. I'm a person who stutters. My goal is to eventually reach subconscious fluency and stuttering remission. Regarding stuttering and **mental health**, I opine that [helplessness](https://i.imgur.com/KTV95ds.jpg) (my [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/1559kna/tips_to_improve_stuttering_from_the_research/)) is a real problem in people who stutter. Learned helplessness occurs when an individual continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to change their circumstances, even when they have the ability to do so. For example, a smoker may repeatedly try to unlearn his addiction and fail to quit. A person who stutters may give up on focusing on the forward flow of speech (e.g., prosody or instructing motor movements) because he doesn't put complete faith in this feedforward system, and instead, relies on the feedback system (such as, instrumental coping behaviors, anxious efforts and voluntary avoidance). **Motor learning:** In regular people, success raises self-efficacy, while failure lowers it - affecting motor learning. But in PWS, they may refuse motor learning. A reason could be, that we perceive disruptions as uncontrollable, whereby we blame low ability (internal locus - what we can control), rather than blaming lack of effort or insufficient preparation (external locus - what we cannot control). Reasons why PWS may have disabled motor learning: \- in regular people, self-efficacy increases by modeling, such as, "If they can do it, I can do it as well". PWS may not believe, that if fluent speakers can do it, that we can do it as well, and thus, it could lead to negating motor learning \- repeated negative experiences \- social persuasion, such as, the media or SLPs discouraging stuttering recovery - and endorsing 'stuttering' in our self-concept (which may lead to less motivation (or discipline) to focus on prosody or instructing motor execution) \- Physiological factors, such as "learned" sensitivity to every little change in our mind or body that we perceive as a trigger **Neurology:** What part of the brain controls learned helplessness? Answer: the dorsal raphe nucleus. What neurological changes are caused by learned helplessness? Answer: * decreasing the amounts of norepinephrine (arousal system) * lowering amounts of GABA (common neurotransmitter) * decreasing serotonin and dopamine (feel-good neurotransmitters). This matches with the results from [research studies](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stutter/comments/14t0946/comment/jr0qi6j/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) about lowering dopamine levels (from stuttering anticipation) * increasing activation of amygdala (intense emotion) * stimulating hormone cortisol