Sense of Humor and Psychological Health among Health Care Professionals

Abstract

This study examined the relationships between the four dimensions sense of humor (humor generation, coping humor, appreciation of humor and appreciation of humorous people) and psychological health. A total of 240 healthcare professionals from two large public hospitals of Varanasi (U.P.), India voluntarily participated in the study. The participants included were Nurses (N= 80), Doctors (N=99) and Hospital administrative Staff (N=61). The respondents were asked to complete the measures of the Multi-dimensional Sense of Humor Scale (MSHS), developed by Thorson and Powell (1993a) and Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) which is developed by Tennant, Fishwick, Platt, Joseph, and Stewart-Brown (2006). Demographic variables included in the study were: name of the organization, age, gender, marital status, salary, designation, education, nature of work, number of working hours, number of working days, organizational tenure and job tenure. The statistical analyses of data included the descriptive statistics, coefficient of correlation and hierarchical regression analysis. The results of regression analyses indicated that all the four dimensions of humor (humor generation, coping humor, appreciation of humor and appreciation of humorous people) along with overall sense of humor significantly positively predicted psychological health of the employees. Implications of the study and avenues for future research were discussed.