Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu, Esplugues de Llobregat, Spain.
Teaching Research & Innovation Unit, Parc Sanitari Sant Joan de Déu, St. Boi de Llobregat, Spain.
Eur J Pain. 2019 Feb;23(2):220-233. doi: 10.1002/ejp.1309. Epub 2018 Sep 30.
The link between humour and sense of humour with pain has been a topic of research for decades. The purpose of the present article was to review the different studies that have been conducted to date on the association between humour and sense of humour with pain.
The literature search was conducted using the PubMed, Science Direct and ProQuest databases. Forty-one studies were reviewed, and the results are summarized and structured into three sections: experimental pain, chronic pain and pain in children.
For experimental pain, the findings support the idea that humorous distractions, such as watching a comedy clip, increase pain tolerance, although most of the studies indicate that other non-humorous distractions produce similar effects. Regarding chronic pain, humour has been studied as a way of coping with pain and the emotional distress produced by chronic pain conditions. The results of correlational studies show significant associations between the use of humour and main variables such as anxiety and catastrophizing. Finally, concerning pain in children, similar findings to those described for the previous sections have been reported, with a notable presence of studies on clinic clown interventions, which promote emotional well-being among children and their parents, although their effectiveness in pain reduction is controversial.
The study of the link between humour and pain is still on an early stage, and overcoming the limitations of previous studies is required to strengthen the promising results that have been observed up to date.
This review summarizes all main findings regarding humour, sense of humour and pain up until the first half of 2018 and offers a list of aspects to be considered in further studies regarding the link of humour and pain to contribute to a more systematic research.
幽默与疼痛之间的联系一直是几十年来研究的主题。本文旨在回顾迄今为止关于幽默与疼痛之间关联的不同研究。
文献检索使用了 PubMed、Science Direct 和 ProQuest 数据库。共回顾了 41 项研究，将结果总结并分为三个部分：实验性疼痛、慢性疼痛和儿童疼痛。
对于实验性疼痛，研究结果支持这样一种观点，即幽默的分心，如观看喜剧片段，可以提高疼痛耐受力，尽管大多数研究表明其他非幽默的分心也会产生类似的效果。关于慢性疼痛，幽默已被研究为应对疼痛和慢性疼痛状况引起的情绪困扰的一种方式。相关性研究的结果表明，幽默的使用与焦虑和灾难化等主要变量之间存在显著关联。最后，关于儿童疼痛，报告了与前几部分描述的类似发现，有大量关于诊所小丑干预的研究，这些干预措施促进了儿童及其父母的情绪健康，尽管它们在减轻疼痛方面的效果存在争议。
幽默与疼痛之间联系的研究仍处于早期阶段，需要克服以前研究的局限性，以加强迄今为止观察到的有希望的结果。
本综述总结了截至 2018 年上半年关于幽默、幽默感和疼痛的所有主要发现，并提供了一个在进一步研究幽默与疼痛联系时需要考虑的方面列表，以促进更系统的研究。
