Volume 7, Article 3
Resilience, Styles of Humor and Well-being in Greek Parents of Children with Disabilities
Anna Lysikatou and Sofia Georgiadou
Citation: Lysikatou, A., & Georgiadou, S. (2023). Resilience, Styles of Humor and Well-being in Greek Parents of Children with Disabilities. European Journal of Applied Positive Psychology,
7, 3, 1-13. https://www.nationalwellbeingservice.org/volumes/volume-7-2023/volume-7-article-3/
Processing dates: Submitted 20 May 2022; Resubmitted 3 October 2022; Accepted 17 October 2022; Published 16th March 2023
Abstract
Background: Parents of children with disabilities comprise a population challenged with a number of stress-inducing adversities while caring for one or more children with a disability. The use of humorconstitutes a coping skill that has been positively linked to resilience and well-being.
Aims: The authors examined for the first time in Greece the relationship between resilience, four styles of humor, and well-being in a sample of 152 parents (55 fathers and 97 mothers) from different cities of Greece.
Methods: The participants were parents of children who received disability-related services (speech therapy, physical therapy, counseling, and occupational therapy). The researchers administered the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC, Connor & Davidson, 2003) to measure resilience and the Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ, Martin et al., 2003) to assess humor. The participants’ well-being was measured with four statements on a Likert-scale. Data analysis included ordered probit regression.
Results: The findings indicated a positive correlation between well-being and resilience, between well-being and self-enhancing humor, as well as between resilience and self-enhancing humor. The results showed that resilience and self-enhancing humor positively correlated with well-being among participants.
Discussion: In alignment with research outcomes of similar studies in other countries, resilience was found to positively predict well-being in this group of parents. A statistically significant positive correlation was found between self-enhancing humor and well-being.
Conclusions: The findings supported the potential benefits of psychoeducational programs specifically designed to integrate resilience with healthy styles of humor in order to promote
psychological well-being in parents of children with disabilities.
Keywords: resilience; humor; well-being; parents; disability
Biographies
Anna Lysikatou MS is with the Psychology Department, CITY College – University of Sheffield, Thessaloniki, Greece. Her current affiliation is the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University Campus 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece.
Email: annalysik@psy.auth.gr
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8393-9958
Sofia Georgiadou PhD is with the Behavioral Sciences department, Yorkville University, New Brunswick, CA, 88 6th St, New Westminster, BC V3L 5B3, Canada. She is also with the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Human Sciences and Humanities Department, Family Therapy Program, Houston, TX, USA
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7595-7857