It's not about having to learn to read. The example the parent poster was making was you already know how to read, but one day find that every book you pick up is filled with nonsense rather than real words. Eventually to stop bothering to try to read anything. That's what they were describing as 'learned helplessness'.

The new paper seems to just re-word it as 'learned loss of control'. I don't see the huge difference. Just because the default state on most things is helplessness doesn't mean you cannot learn to fall back into helplessness again. But if the new wording helps with constructing treatment plans for mental health issues, sounds fine enough to me.