The appreciation of humor in care by young adults with emerging mental illness
Poster C27, Wednesday, October%2010, 11:30%20am%20-%201:00%20pm, Essex%20Ballroom
Cédric Devillé1, Maryse Badan Bâ1, Logos Curtis1; 1Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève
The use of humor in health care and particularly in psychiatry has already given rise to questions about its role in recovery or as a factor of resilience. The curative dimension of humor has been considered by the majority of therapeutic currents (Chapman & Chapman-Santana, 1995; Rengade, 2014; Van Hemelrijck et al., 2012) while its acceptance by patients has been studied less. In order to further explore the subjective appreciation of humor by patients, we submitted a 30 item questionnaire to 28 patients who attend our unit for young adults (18 – 25 years old) with emerging mental illness. The questionnaires explored 4 domains: humor appreciation, humor vector and context, positive aspects of humor, and negative aspects of humor. Items were scored on a 5 point Likert-type scale (-2: complete disagreement; -1: partial disagreement; 0: neither disagreement nor agreement; 1: partial agreement; 2: complete agreement). The main results are a general good acceptance of humor. Positive characteristics of humor are generally well appreciated and negative ones are partially recognized. Patients think that humor should not be restricted to patients but that care givers should be allowed to be humorous. The context in which humor is done is also important because it is well tolerated in therapeutic groups but less in individual sessions.
Topic Area: Psychosocial Interventions