This document summarizes a student's research project on the relationship between humor and depression across different age groups. The student began with a broad topic on humor and health but narrowed it down to humor's correlation with depression. Through their research, the student found that comedians often use humor to cope with past tragedies and that depression affects people differently based on personality. The student was unable to draw definitive conclusions due to the complexity of comparing humor styles and an illness like depression across age groups.

1. What Role Does Humor Play
In Correlation to Depression
within different age groups?
Nicole Kleint
CWID 101
May 7, 2017

2. Where The Research Began
• I began my research with just a simple google search to get a
broad idea of how much my topic has been researched.
• I started with the question “What Role Does Humor Play In Correlation
to Health.” I soon realized this was way too broad of a topic to focus on.
• My main interest was comedians that have battled with
depression or had a more dark sense of humor that makes me
wonder when I read it how they think of these things.
• After thinking about my main focus and what really interested me in the
project I was able to narrow down my searching from the correlation in
health to the specific correlation to depression.
• I tried to use sources that were more reliable and professional to
try and understand the correlation better.

3. How the Sources Created a Roadmap
• I first started with just humor and its relationship to health and
this lead me to see that I could make it much more specific.
Many articles related to personality types and humor which
helped lead me to researching depression specifically.
• Not surprisingly, when I first started doing the research a lot of
articles were linked to Robin Williams depressions and death
with him being a very famous comedian.
• A lot of studies had many statistics, and knowing Robin Williams
had been in the spotlight for being a comedian with depression I
also found some helpful clips to watch without all the research
language.

4. Problems I Encountered
• I quickly learned my topic was too broad.
• Researching more about just depression would have been
helpful to understand its true meaning.
• Many of the sources wanted to connect to Robin Williams just
because of his fame, and I wanted to dig farther than that and
into more relatable examples.
• Depression is more of an illness that many people struggle with
in different ways. It is hard to compare an illness that is unique
to each person and generalize it. It is also a lot different
comparing humor and peoples general health to humor and an
illness.

5. Expansion of My Research Question
• I began my project just wanting to learn about the correlation
between humor and health, but this was a very broad subject
that was not easy to research.
• I narrowed it down to wanting to look into the relationship
between the humor culture and depression.
• I finally narrowed it all the way down to humor and the
correlation with depression in different age groups after I started
the research.
• Many of the studies broke up their results by age group, especially since
many believe the correlation between comedian humor and depression
is the tragic events that have happened in one’s life. These events can
happen at all different ages.

6. Most Important Things I Learned
• Many comedians come from a place of tragedy and use humor to
overcome their problems.
• Typically it doesn’t matter if the tragedy happens as an adolescent
or an adult, depression and humor still seemed to be linked.
• Depression is a serious illness that affects each person differently
and everyone handles it differently. Even if someone depressed
uses humor to help some will have a dark humor and some will
have a fluffy humor. Feeling funny and happy generally makes
most people feel better, but personality types also play a large roll
in how the correlation is affected.

7. Comedians Advocate for Depression
• One interesting thing I found is many comedians speak out
about their struggles and the importance of depression.
• My favorite was from Sarah Silverman on the Ellen show
because I felt like she described it on a level I could actually
understand even though I don’t struggle with depression like
this.
• https://youtu.be/pZGVgl_RZ5Y
• There are many others who use it as part of their act to almost
make fun of it to try and deal with it and I find that to be a very
interesting reaction.

8. Reflection
• This project has taught me that researching a topic is difficult
because it can go in so many directions. The more specific the
topic is, the easier the research gets.
• Once I narrowed down my topic it made me want to do more
research about depression specifically. I found it interesting
that no matter how much research I did, I kept wanting to look
up more information that seemed to stem away from my
original idea.
• I think I struggled with being all over the place and next time I
wouldn’t just start on the internet where I get so much
information back, but maybe organize my ideas on paper and
where to go specifically with each idea so I can keep my idea
clean and concise.

9. My Conclusion . . .
• I don’t think I came up with a firm answer because I think there
are many factors that I am not able to fully combine yet.
• I do believe that there is a clear link between humor and
depression. I don’t think it is always a positive link because
some people just use it to cover up bigger issues. If I had stuck
with my broader topic, I genuinely believe humor makes
people happier and improves their overall health.
• Humor can be used a lot of different ways by people and one of
the most interesting points I learned and agree with is that
different personalities absorb and reflect on it in completely
different ways.

10. Works Cited
• Barrie, Zara. "There's Pain In Laughter: Why The Funniest People Are Often The Saddest."Elite
Daily. N.p., 26 Feb. 2016. Web. 04 May 2017.
• Freiheit, Stacy R., James C. Overholser, and Kim L. Lehnert. "The Association Between Humor
and Depression in Adolescent Psychiatric Inpatients and High School Students." Journal of
Adolescent Research. Sage Journals, 1 Jan. 1998. Web. 05 May 2017.
• Persaud, Dr Raj, and Adrian Furnham. "Psychologists Find Your Sense of Humour Predicts
Depression." HuffPost UK. The Huffington Post, 12 Oct. 2014. Web. 07 May 2017.
• Rnic, Katerina, David J. A. Dozois, and Rod A. Martin. "Cognitive Distortions, Humor Styles,
and Depression." Europe's Journal of Psychology. PsychOpen, 19 Aug. 2016. Web. 06 May
2017.
• "Sarah Silverman on Battling Depression." YouTube. The Ellen Show, 24 Oct. 2015. Web. 03
May 2017.
• Sifferlin, Alexandra. "Robin Williams and the Link Between Comedy and Depression." Time.
Time, 13 Aug. 2014. Web. 03 May 2017.
• "The Study of Relationship Between Sense of Humor and General Health in Students." The
Study of Relationship Between Sense of Humor and General Health in Students - ScienceDirect.
Science Direct, 27 Dec. 2011. Web. 03 May 2017.