The association of stress resilience and humor among medical students

Abstract

Context: Students are one of the most sensitive groups of the society and they face challenges through academic situations. Resilience has a protective role against the stressful situation. Aims: The aim of this study was the investigation of humor and stress resilience associations among students. Setting and Design: Two hundred and sixty students were selected from Qom University of medical sciences during multi-stage cluster random sampling for this cross-sectional study in 2020. Material and Methods: The study instruments were the Samuels Academic Resilience Indicator and the multidimensional humor questionnaire. Students were divided into different groups based on their field of study, then using random sampling method, the number of sample in each class was selected from all in the same category. Statistical Analysis Used: The collected data were analyzed by using multiple regression and descriptive statistical analysis by SPSS version 18. Results: The results showed the association between the stress resilience and humor was direct and significant. Multiple regression results also showed laughter (P = 0.001 and β = 0.26), humor enjoyment (P = 0.010 and β = 0.16) and social humor (P = 0.010 and β = 0.19) predicted the students' stress resilience; with a total of 22% of the variance of resilience. Conclusions: According to the findings, humor may play an important effective role in increasing resilience to stress, by creating and empowering these components, we may promote their resilience among medical students.