The Effectiveness of Humor Training based on the McGhee Model on Anxiety Dimensions and Family Functioning in Married Women Referring to Health Centers in Tehran

Women are more likely to develop anxiety than men, and this strongly affects family functioning. Humor training has been applied to educational and clinical cases and has been found to be effective. However, there is litter research on the use of humor training to improve family functioning in women.Therefore, this study aimed to determine the effectiveness of humor training on anxiety and family functioning in married women.

This study was performed in the form of an educational trial with pre-test, post-test, and the control group. The researchpopulation included all married women referring to health centers in Tehran in 2019. Using simple random sampling, 50 womenwere selected and divided into experimental (25 persons) and control (25 persons) groups and completed the Family Functioning Scale (Bloom, 1985) and the Anxiety Scale (Cattell, 1973). In the experimental group, sense of humor training was performed in 8 sessions, 1 session per week and each session for 1 hour. At the end of the training, the post-test was taken from the participants in the two groups. The data collected from the pre-test and post-testwere analyzed using independent samples t-test, paired samples t-test, and multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).

The results showed that the training of sense of humor had a positive and significant effect on reducing total anxiety and its dimensions including morbid anxiety and hidden anxiety in the experimental group (p<0.05). Also, the training of sense of humor increased the mean scores of family functioning in the intervention group in the post-test phase (p<0.05).

Overall, the findings showed that training a sense of humor is effective in reducing anxiety and improving the family functioning of married women. Therefore, it seems necessary to consider the training of sense of humor in the planning of the prevention of mental health problems and the improvement of the family functioning.