The Role Of Humor In The Hope And Posttraumatic Growth Among Patients With Leukemia

Positive psychology approach has been growing in recent years; Humor is an adaptive evolution toolthat as a mechanism for coping and relieveing stress plays a role in the events of stressful life andmay make it easy to stand physical or psychological pain resulting from shock of a cancer diagnosis.The aim of this study was to investigate the role of humor in the hope and posttraumatic growthamong patients with Leukemia. A descriptive study was correlational. For this purpose 70 patientswith leukemia in the city of Zahedan were selected by available sampling method. The instrumentused in this study was the sense of humor questionnaire (SHQ) (Khoshouei, Oreizy and Aghaei,2009), hope (Snyder et al, 1991) and Posttraumatic Growth (PTGI) (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 1996). Forthe data analysis, correlation and stepwise regression analysis method was used. The resultsshowed that between the total score of the humor and component enjoyment of humor (p<0.01), andsense of humor in stressful conditions (p<0.05) with hope there is a significant positiverelationship. Also the results showed that the total score of humor significantly predicts hope(p<0.01), another result was that there is a significant positive relationship between the total scoreof the humor with posttraumatic growth (p<0.001) and the results of regression showed that thetotal score of the humor can significantly predict posttraumatic growth (p<0.01). Humor affects therate of hope against this disease and strengthens this ability in patients that they can find asolution against pressures and hopefully proceed toward overcoming their problem. Also for thesepatients Humor plays a significant role in the positive life changes such as social relationships.