Marziali Elsa, McDonald Lynn, Donahue Peter
Kunin Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit, Baycrest, Toronto, Canada.
Aging Ment Health. 2008 Nov;12(6):713-8. doi: 10.1080/13607860802154374.
This study examined the associations among coping humor, other personal/social factors and the health status of community-dwelling older adults.
Survey questionnaires were completed with 73 community-dwelling older adults. Included were measures of coping humor, spirituality, self-efficacy, social support and physical and mental health status.
Correlations across all variables showed coping humor to be significantly associated with social support, self-efficacy, depression and anxiety. Forward stepwise regression analyses showed that coping humor and self-efficacy contributed to outcome variance in measures of mental health status. Contrary to expectation, neither social support nor spirituality contributed to the total outcome variance on any of the dependent measures.
The importance of social support, self-efficacy and spirituality in determining the quality of life of older adults is well supported in the literature. Coping humor as a mechanism for managing the inevitable health stresses of aging has received less attention. This study shows that coping humor and self efficacy are important factors for explaining health status in older adults. Correlations among coping humor, self efficacy and social support suggest that a sense of humor may play an important role in reinforcing self-efficacious approaches to the management of health issues.
本研究探讨了应对幽默、其他个人/社会因素与社区居住老年人健康状况之间的关联。
对73名社区居住老年人进行了问卷调查。调查内容包括应对幽默、精神性、自我效能感、社会支持以及身心健康状况等方面的测量。
所有变量之间的相关性表明，应对幽默与社会支持、自我效能感、抑郁和焦虑显著相关。逐步向前回归分析表明，应对幽默和自我效能感对心理健康状况测量中的结果变异有贡献。与预期相反，社会支持和精神性在任何一项因变量测量中均未对总结果变异产生贡献。
社会支持、自我效能感和精神性在决定老年人生活质量方面的重要性在文献中得到了充分支持。应对幽默作为应对衰老不可避免的健康压力的一种机制，受到的关注较少。本研究表明，应对幽默和自我效能感是解释老年人健康状况的重要因素。应对幽默、自我效能感和社会支持之间的相关性表明，幽默感可能在强化自我效能感以应对健康问题的方法中发挥重要作用。
