Jesters of Well-Being: Examining the Relationship between Clown Doctors and Patients.

Clown doctors play a crucial role in enhancing the well-being of patients through the use of humor. However, little is known about how the use of humor by clown doctors changes in relation to the developmental age of patients. This research explores the interplay between the type of humor used by clown doctors, their experience (in terms of years of clowning and type of clowning), and the developmental age of the patients (children, adolescents, adults, elderly). Data for this cross-sectional study were collected through an online survey distributed to 210 Italian clown doctors (143 females, 67 males), aged between 18 and 75 years (M = 47.34, SD = 12.31), affiliated with different Clown Care Units. The survey included the Comic Styles Markers, questions on the patients' developmental age, type of clowning (Auguste vs. Whiteface), and years of experience. The findings enhance our understanding on how clown doctors interact with patients of different developmental ages. The discussion draws connections to previous studies conducted on groups of clown doctors, providing a broader context for understanding the implications of humorous interactions in this unique healthcare domain.

Do Clowns Really Taste Funny? An Investigation of the Relationship between Humor and Playfulness in Clown Doctors.

Healthcare clowning represents a well-established method for relieving patients and their relatives of discomfort during hospitalization. Although studies concerning the effectiveness of this approach are increasing in number, state-of-the-art studies conducted to evaluate the psychological characteristics of clown doctors are scarce. In this cross-sectional study, a convenient sample of 210 clown doctors (143 females, 67 males) aged between 18 and 75 years (M = 47.34, SD = 12.31) completed a demographic questionnaire, the Comic Styles Markers, and the Short Measure for Adult Playfulness. The results demonstrated that clown doctors bring higher levels of fun, benevolent humor, and nonsense and a lower level of cynicism compared to the populace. Moreover, the participants with more experience tend to use less irony, sarcasm, and cynicism than those with less experience. Playfulness was primarily related to the lighter styles of humor, and specific differences between the Whiteface and the Auguste clown doctors were observed. The results are discussed with reference to previous studies conducted on groups of clown doctors.

Integrating Sparse Learning-Based Feature Detectors into Simultaneous Localization and Mapping-A Benchmark Study.

Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) is one of the cornerstones of autonomous navigation systems in robotics and the automotive industry. Visual SLAM (V-SLAM), which relies on image features, such as keypoints and descriptors to estimate the pose transformation between consecutive frames, is a highly efficient and effective approach for gathering environmental information. With the rise of representation learning, feature detectors based on deep neural networks (DNNs) have emerged as an alternative to handcrafted solutions. This work examines the integration of sparse learned features into a state-of-the-art SLAM framework and benchmarks handcrafted and learning-based approaches by comparing the two methods through in-depth experiments. Specifically, we replace the ORB detector and BRIEF descriptor of the ORBSLAM3 pipeline with those provided by Superpoint, a DNN model that jointly computes keypoints and descriptors. Experiments on three publicly available datasets from different application domains were conducted to evaluate the pose estimation performance and resource usage of both solutions.

Humor and Attachment: Exploring the Relationships between Insecure Attachment and the Comic Styles.

In this study, the relationship between individuals' insecure attachment styles and eight comic styles was explored. A sample of 636 Italian adults (206 males, 428 females, 2 non-binary), aged 18 to 81 years (M = 41.44; DS = 13.44) completed an online survey to investigate the relationship between insecure attachment styles, namely anxious and avoidant, and the eight comic styles, clustered into lighter style (fun, benevolent humor, wit, nonsense) and darker style (irony, satire, sarcasm, cynicism). The findings of this research indicated the lighter and darker styles were differently related to the anxious and avoidant styles. The anxious attachment was negatively related to both benevolent humor and wit and positively with irony. The avoidant style was positively associated with nonsense and sarcasm, while no other relationship emerged. This research indicated that attachment orientations are associated with individual differences in the detailed differentiation of humor-related styles.

Understanding the Association Between Humor and Emotional Distress: The Role of Light and Dark Humor in Predicting Depression, Anxiety, and Stress.

Despite increasing interest in the relationship between humor and psychological distress, investigations have failed to focus on specific categories of humor and negative mental conditions. A sample of 686 Italian participants (187 men and 499 women), aged between 20 and 76 years, completed an online survey, data from which was used to investigate the relationship between eight comic styles, depression, anxiety, and stress. Findings from the multiple linear regression demonstrate benign humor as a protective factor of all three variables considered, while irony was positively associated with anxiety and stress. Wit was a protective factor associated with anxiety, while sarcasm was positively related to depression. No significant correlations emerged between the other variables considered. These findings highlight how specific categories are linked to varying dimensions of emotional distress, which are discussed with reference to the extant literature.

Associations of Self-Efficacy, Optimism, and Empathy with Psychological Health in Healthcare Volunteers.

Optimism and self-efficacy have been associated with psychological health. Empathy has also been found to have a unique role in community health volunteering and promote positive functioning. This study investigated whether self-efficacy and optimism were associated with psychological health in terms of psychological and subjective well-being in healthcare volunteers. It also investigated whether empathy added to the explanation of psychological health, over and above that accounted for by self-efficacy and optimism. A convenience sample of 160 Italian clown doctors volunteering in various hospitals completed self-report measures of self-efficacy, optimism, empathy, psychological well-being, and subjective well-being. Results of hierarchical multiple regression analysis indicated that self-efficacy and optimism were associated with both outcomes and that aspects of empathy, such as others' perspective taking and personal distress for others' difficulties, added to the explanation of psychological health with opposite effects. The present study adds to previous research on the role of self-efficacy, optimism, and empathy for community health volunteers' psychological health. It also offers suggestions regarding the training for this type of volunteer.

Psychometric Comparisons of Benevolent and Corrective Humor across 22 Countries: The Virtue Gap in Humor Goes International.

Recently, two forms of virtue-related humor, benevolent and corrective, have been introduced. Benevolent humor treats human weaknesses and wrongdoings benevolently, while corrective humor aims at correcting and bettering them. Twelve marker items for benevolent and corrective humor (the BenCor) were developed, and it was demonstrated that they fill the gap between humor as temperament and virtue. The present study investigates responses to the BenCor from 25 samples in 22 countries (overall N = 7,226). The psychometric properties of the BenCor were found to be sufficient in most of the samples, including internal consistency, unidimensionality, and factorial validity. Importantly, benevolent and corrective humor were clearly established as two positively related, yet distinct dimensions of virtue-related humor. Metric measurement invariance was supported across the 25 samples, and scalar invariance was supported across six age groups (from 18 to 50+ years) and across gender. Comparisons of samples within and between four countries (Malaysia, Switzerland, Turkey, and the UK) showed that the item profiles were more similar within than between countries, though some evidence for regional differences was also found. This study thus supported, for the first time, the suitability of the 12 marker items of benevolent and corrective humor in different countries, enabling a cumulative cross-cultural research and eventually applications of humor aiming at the good.

Clowning as a Complementary Approach for Reducing Iatrogenic Effects in Pediatrics.

Hospitalized children who undergo painful procedures are more susceptible than others to experiencing iatrogenic effects, such as anxiety, pain, and severe stress. Clowns in clinical setting have been found to be effective in reducing children's experiences of these effects during hospitalization and before procedures. This article provides an overview of clowning in health care settings; reviews major studies conducted on clowning for hospitalized children, discussing evidence that clown interventions decrease pain and distress in pediatric patients; and concludes with a discussion of health care clowning as a profession.

A combined intervention of art therapy and clown visits to reduce preoperative anxiety in children.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To test whether a combined intervention of art therapy and clown visits could enhance the efficacy of oral medication in reducing children's anxiety at parental separation prior to induction of anaesthesia. BACKGROUND: Approximately 50% of children undergoing surgery report high anxiety at anaesthesia induction. Complementary therapies have been used to decrease children's anxiety, but no study has evaluated the efficacy of a combination of such therapies. DESIGN: This is an observational study, which involved allocating different interventions to two groups and measuring their anxiety at two time points. METHODS: This study assigned 78 children (aged 3-11 years) undergoing general anaesthesia for surgery to two conditions. The control group underwent general anaesthesia following standard practice, and the intervention group received an intervention of integrated art therapy and clown visits upon their arrival at the hospital and throughout their time in the preoperating room. Each child in both groups received 0·5 mg/kg oral midazolam 30 minutes before surgery and had a parent present throughout their time in the preoperating room. Each child's anxiety was evaluated twice using the Modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale: at baseline and at separation from parents. Repeated measures anova was used to test for differences between the time points and the two groups. RESULTS: Children in the intervention group showed a significant (p < 0·001) reduction in Modified Yale Preoperative Anxiety Scale scores at parental separation compared to those in the control group. Additionally, the majority of parents and nurses evaluated the intervention to be effective for reducing children's anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: This study found that an intervention based on art therapy and clown visits enhanced the effect of midazolam in reducing children's anxiety at preoperative separation from parents. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Paediatric staffs may consider using such a combination of strategies in preparing children for anaesthesia induction.

Clowning in Health Care Settings: The Point of View of Adults.

Within the past decade, there has been a surge of interest in investigating the effects of clown intervention in a large variety of clinical settings. Many studies have focused on the effects of clown intervention on children. However, few studies have investigated clowning effects on adults. This paper presents an overview of the concept of medical clowning followed by a literature review conducted on the empirical studies drawn from three data bases (PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar), with the aim of mapping and discussing the evidence of clowning effects on non-children, namely adults. The following areas were investigated: Adult and elderly patients (mainly those with dementia), observers of clowning, namely non-hospitalized adults who are at the hospital as relatives of patients or health-care staff, and finally clowns themselves. The main results are that 1) clown intervention induces positive emotions, thereby enhancing the patient's well-being, reduces psychological symptoms and emotional reactivity, and prompts a decrease in negative emotions, such as anxiety and stress; 2) clown doctors are also well-perceived by relatives and healthcare staff and their presence appears to be useful in creating a lighter atmosphere in the health setting; 3) few pilot studies have been conducted on clown doctors and this lacuna represents a subject for future research.

Clown intervention to reduce preoperative anxiety in children and parents: a randomized controlled trial.

This study investigated whether a clown doctor intervention could reduce preoperative anxiety in children hospitalized for minor surgery and in their parents. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 77 children and 119 parents: the clown group consisted of 52 children accompanied in the preoperating room by their parents (n = 89) and two clowns while the comparison group consisted of children accompanied by the parents only. The clown intervention significantly reduced the children's preoperative anxiety: children benefited from the clown's presence and showed better adjustment than children in the comparison group. Mothers in Comparison Group showed higher anxiety.