I think it would be foolish to assume that the issues with helicopters and airliners are identical. At least in helicopters we manually fly an inherently severely unstable beast (albeit with autopilot stability assistance) for every takeoff and landing (which lets face it are the tricky bits - any idiot can fly in the cruise) and compared to many airline pilots our number of takeoffs and landings per year are much much greater, and more varied. We have to demonstrate that we can fly without any artificial stability every 6 months / year at which point, compared to an airliner, a helicopter is a wild bucking beast (well, it is when I fly it anyway!).
Certainly in both cases, the pilots must know what will happen when they move the flight controls, and what will happen when they press buttons on the automation, but I think loss of manual flying skill is less of an issue on RW than FW. The wrong mental attitude, where automation dependency results in a delay to take manual control or drop down a level of automation, I agree is an issue for both but that is not the same as loss of manual flying skill.
When we first got the EC225, people coming from the 332L really struggled with being at ease with the automation. I used to make them fly a VFR circuits using the automation / datum beep switches etc - not because that's a good way to fly a circuit, but to get them familiar with the various modes and controls. They hated it and just wanted to fly it manually, and I was like the a John Wayne character beating them over the head to make them do it. But gradually they became more accustomed to it, then they loved it, and finally, 6 or so years later, we started to notice signs of automation dependency. So it is a fine balance to be sufficiently comfortable in the use of the automation to make best use out of it, to becoming dependant and thus reluctant to revert to a lower level of automation or manual flight. I still think we are some way behind the airlines in this area though - but we have to make sure we don't catch up with them.