Depression, Anxiety and Stress Reduction in Medical Education: Humor as an Intervention

Abstract

Background: In recent years there has been a growing appreciation of the issues of quality of life and stresses involved in medical training as this may affect their learning and academic performance. Objective of the study was to explore the effectiveness of humor when used as intervention in large group teaching over negative emotions amongst students. Method: The present Interventional, Randomized control trial study was carried out on medical students of 4th Semester of RMCH, Bareilly, which has total 90 students. Using simple random sampling lottery method the whole class was divided in two groups-A and B consisting of 45 students each. Group A as control group and Group B experimental group. In first and last lecture of both groups Dass-21 was used as measuring scale, for depression, anxiety and stress and results were compared to see the effect of humor on these three negative emotions. Result: Comparison of Severe and Extremely severe Stress: In Group A 40.54% in class -1 increased to 47.54% in class- 4, while in group B initial 13.15 % was reduced to 0 % (highly significant). Anxiety: In group A, after Class 1 -57.45% increased to 61.11% after class 4, while in group B, after class 1- 23.68% reduced to 2.27% only (highly significant). Depression: In group A, after Class 1 - 40.53% & 41.66 % after class 4 (not significant), while in group B, after class 1- 18.41% reduced to 0% (highly significant). Conclusion: In present study humor was found to be very effective intervention in relieving students on their negative emotions of depression, anxiety and stress to a larger extent. Further research would justify the use of humor as an effective teaching aid in medical education.