Humor and medicine

Traditional medicine is generally reluctant to new fields that, on a first approach, are not rigorously scientific. This is the case of the many attempts that medics and professionals of other fields have tried to include the topic of humor and mood at the center of the discussion about the causes of many illnesses. But also, in the inverse sense, demonstrate that humor and its immediate product, laughter, can be positive elements in recovery therapies.

The topic was recently dealt with in film, when the famous comedy and drama actor Robin Williams embodied “Patch Adams”, an uncommon medicine student convinced that humor could heal. In the film, he had to fight against the opposition of a system that resists to relax and open to alternative therapies.

In his book Humor and Health, Dr. Raymond Moody not only assures that humor possesses an important healing power, but also makes concrete proposals for incorporating activities that include this type of therapy in health institutions. “Over the years I have found a surprising number of cases in which patients that laughed at themselves recovered their health, or at least used their sense of humor as a positive and adaptable response to sickness”, he assures.

(1) From that observation, which came to support an old popular belief on the benefits of maintaining a good mood, this North American born in Georgia in 1944 decided to submit this empirical data to a detailed research. He got to assure that humor and health are related issues, even when he recognizes that certain cases of laughter in its aberrant form is a symptom of certain pathologies.

It is estimated that 80 million people suffer hearing disorders in Europe.