Sense of humor disorders in patients with schizophrenia and affective disorders

IntroductionNowadays humor research in psychology becomes more and more popular. Humor is a kind of universal phenomenon and is connected with all spheres of human being and social functioning (Ivanova, Enikolopov, 2006; Martin, 2007). Many clinicians suggest sense of humor disorder to be an important diagnostic criterion. Thus Arieti (1950, as cited in Forabosco, 2007) called schizotypal intellectual disorder "paleological thinking" and supposed it to be connected with humor impairment. The similar idea was declared by Levin (1957, as cited in Forabosco, 2007). That's why sense of humor study in psychiatric patients is of present interest. Sense of humor is such a unique psychic phenomenon that reveals the unit of intellect and affect. So, some clinicians suppose its disorder to appear even earlier than more severe intellectual or emotional disorders (Luk, 1977). If to confirm this, the possibility of early diagnostics would exist. Despite of its practical meaning, there is quite a few empirical data on humor in clinical context. So, this study becomes one of the first steps on the way to overcome this gap.The existing studies on sense of humor disorders may be combined into two main approaches: quantitative and qualitative (Ivanova, Enikolopov, 2009; Forabosco, 2007). The quantitative one supposes sense of humor "decrease" in psychiatric patients (e.g., Levine, Abelson, 1969; Levine, Redlich, 1955). The approach doesn't give convincing explanation of such kind of deficit and doesn't allow to distinguish patients with different diagnoses. Moreover, sense of humor is a complex multidimensional phenomenon (see Martin, 2007; Ruch, 2007) and includes a list of parameters: intellectual understanding of punch line, emotional involvement, disposition to laughter etc. Evidently, sense of humor disorder also includes different components.The second, qualitative approach is connected with analysis of sense of humor peculiarities in patients with different psychiatric syndromes (Polimeni, Reiss, 2006; Polimeni et al., 2010; Werth, Perkins, Boucher, 2001). Forabosco (2007) supposes that psychopathology doesn't simply decrease humor but rather various diagnostic categories may be accompanied by a specific picture of humor alteration. This approach gives much more possibilities for conceptualizing, but it hasn't gone further than description of the specifics yet. This study is made mostly in the flow of qualitative approach but at the same time includes the analysis of sense of humor components that may decrease.The main hypothesis is that sense of humor disorders have nosological specifics in patients with schizophrenia and affective disorders. For affective disorders we suggest to reveal the decrease of emotional and behavioral response (laughter) while intact intellectual understanding of punch line. As for schizophrenic patients the stress was done more to a cognitive deficit in humor recognition and revealing specific "schizotypal" humor preferences. So, the two mental deceases were taken as characterized with the opposite sense of humor disorders.MethodResearch participantsThe four groups of subjects took part in the study. All of them were young males from 17 to 32 years old (mean age of 22), totally 101 subjects. The first group contains patients with affective disorders such as manic-depressive syndrome and cyclothymia -- F-31, F-33, F-34 according to ICD-10 (18 subjects). It includes both depressive and manic ones. The second group is composed of patients with schizotypal disorder -- F-21.0 (23 subjects). These subjects are characterized by schizotypal intellectual disorders without psychotic symptoms. The third group includes patients with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders which are characterized by such psychotic symptoms as delusions and hallucinations -- F-20, F-25 (30 subjects). And the fourth is control group of healthy people (30 subjects). InstrumentsSeveral levels of analysis were distinguished for sense of humor disorder: 1) humor recognition, 2) subjective assessment of jokes -- humor preferences and 3) the degree of behavioral response (laughter). …