Humor Assessment and Interventions in Palliative Care: A Systematic Review.

Lisa M Linge-Dahl,Lukas Radbruch,Sonja Heintz,Willibald Ruch

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00890

Lisa M Linge-Dahl, Lukas Radbruch + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00890

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Abstract

Background: The central goal of palliative care is to optimize the quality of life of patients suffering from life-limiting illnesses, which includes psychosocial and spiritual wellbeing. Research has demonstrated positive correlations between humor and laughter with life satisfaction and other aspects of wellbeing, and physiological symptoms can be improved by humorous stimuli.Objectives: The aim of this review is to evaluate humor interventions and assessments that have been applied in palliative care and to derive implications for future research.Methods: A systematic review of four databases identified 13 included studies. Criteria for inclusion were peer-reviewed English-language studies on humor interventions or assessments in a palliative care context.Results: Two studies on humor interventions and 11 studies on humor assessment were included in the systematic review. Most of these studies were about the patients' perspective on humor in palliative care. Findings showed that humor had a positive effect on patients, their relatives, and professional caregivers. Humor was widely perceived as appropriate and seen as beneficial to care in all studies.Conclusions: Even though humor interventions seem to be potentially useful in palliative care, descriptions evaluating their use are scarce. Overall, research on humor assessment and interventions in palliative care has remained limited in terms of quantity and quality. More research activities are needed to build a solid empirical foundation for implementing humor and laughter as part of regular palliative care activities.

Highlights

RationaleHumor has been subject to research and philosophical reflections for centuries and has been used for interventions in the health sector (Hulse, 1994)
Not losing one’s sense of humor was rated as an important spiritual end-of-life need (Delgado-Guay et al, 2016). These results might differ significantly in other cultural and spiritual settings, but we found no publications on the use of humor outside the Western-European cultural setting
Some conclusions about the benefits of humor can be derived from the reviewed studies

Summary

Introduction

RationaleHumor has been subject to research and philosophical reflections for centuries and has been used for interventions in the health sector (Hulse, 1994). Positive correlations have been reported on humor and laughter in relation to life satisfaction outside the health care setting (Wild et al, 2003; Ruch et al, 2010), and there is some evidence of a relationship between humor and health (Martin, 2001, 2004). The theoretical model of the effect of humor on health has been described by Martin (2008) and Gremigni (2012) extensively, who concluded that humor as a complex psychological phenomenon needs to be differentiated according to the kind of humor and the setting. Research has demonstrated positive correlations between humor and laughter with life satisfaction and other aspects of wellbeing, and physiological symptoms can be improved by humorous stimuli

Objectives

Results

Conclusion