Humor: Benefits On Mental Health

Humor is wonderful. I know that I thoroughly enjoy the feeling of a good laugh. I also enjoy intelligent humor that really makes you think then hits your gut with a punch line. I use humor daily to combat my own mental health issues, mainly depression and anxiety. I use humor when I mentor, when I counsel and well, basically any time I can get a good joke in. Our pastor is fantastic at adding a punch line to his sermons, which is most surely necessary for me to stay engaged. It’s like the song says in Mary Poppins, “I love to laugh” especially to the point where my cheeks hurt from smiling. Below are some ways that humor is vital to our mental health. I could not come up with this list on my own and have sources I used from research. As I have a Psychology background, I often site in APA, so please bear with me if that is what you see.

Humor Can:

1. Can aid in a more positive outlook on the world.
2. Can lower stress and nervousness in people
3. Can give you an idea of where someone is “different humor styles might have either positive or negative links with mental health. Depending on humor style, associations could also be stronger or weaker” (Schneider and Voracke, 2018).
4. Humor can increase interpersonal relationships, you can find that your humor matches someone else’s humor or that someone else makes you laugh beyond breath.
5. Humor helps one prevail against his or her problems. One always wants to be sure that humor is not used as a mask, but different lens by which to examine life.  
6. Humor can humanize you.
7. Humor is an invitation to be less defensive, guarded and more transparent (Borcherdt, 2002).
8. Increases tolerance. Tolerance won’t make for a happy love life, but it is unlikely you will have a happier love life without it. Dr. Albert Ellis, founder of Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, points out that when you laugh at yourself, you increase your tolerance levels. Not taking yourself too seriously in this way will facilitate this same tolerance in relating to others (Borcherdt, 2002).
9. Discourages self-proving conduct. Those who have the wherewithal to laugh at themselves are less inclined to try to prove themselves to one another.
10. Becomes a mechanism of self and other discovery. Laughter can reveal character. Humor lowers your guard while exposing thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that you may have never known existed in you and yours.

​Moral of the story, laugh! Please, don’t laugh because you are trying to hide something deep and dark, but laugh so it can heal you.

​
References:
Journal of Rational-Emotive & Cognitive-Behavior Therapy, Vol. 20, Nos. 3/4, Winter 2002 (2002) HUMOR AND ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO MENTAL HEALTH. Bill Borcherdt Clinical Services of Winnebago County and Private Practice, Neenah, Wisconsin.
Schneider, M., & Voracek, M. (2018). A joke a day keeps the doctor away? Meta-analytical evidence of differential associations of habitual humor styles with mental health. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.

---