Fun, puzzles, and coloring | Kim Rosenthal, MD

What’s this about?

We know what you’re thinking. This website is about addiction and mental health problems, and there’s no room for laughter amidst such chaos. What do psychiatry and humor have to do with one other, right?

Here’s the complicated answer. (Pardon the formality)

“A major conclusion of previous reviews on the general effects of humor [4, 6, 18] is that humor has a broad range of effects on perceptions, attitudes, judgments and emotions, which may mediate directly or indirectly to benefit the physical and psychological state.”
— Mark Gelkopf.

Gelkopf M. The Use of Humor in Serious Mental Illness: a Review. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2011

Here’s the quick answer:

Humor is the bomb. Good bomb. Just saying.

Humor in psychiatry

Humor in psychiatry is called all sorts of things… humor therapy, tailored and untailored laughter, medical clowning, humorous interventional renderings, and psychodynamically-oriented knock knock jokes. Okay, I’m making some of this stuff up, but you get the idea.

The diagram below explains it best. Or tries to.

Studies show that psychiatrists with a sense of humor are more likely to get

For a psychiatrist like me, humor is therapy, intervention, coping skill, self-soothing strategy, a sign of maturity (for those who like my jokes), and an endorphin-raising physiological experience that mimics exercise if done often and long enough. Some say it’s good for weight loss too, although studies suggest physical exercise is still better.

So Patch Adams meets psychiatry. Monty Python meets recovery. Mental health needs humor. Life needs laughter. Period.