Occupational Therapy News OTnews November 2019 | Page 38

FEATURE FORENSIC SERVICES
and
Andrew Higginson, an occupational
therapy assistant within the prison
service, looks at an innovative way of
delivering occupational therapy in a
personality treatment service
W
hat do you get if you put a mixture of
men with different personality traits in
a comedy workshop in a personality
assessment and treatment service?
A foolish occupational therapy assistant (*inset
laughter here*).
In 2014, the British Journal of Psychiatry published
a paper entitled Psychotic traits in comedians (Ando,
Claridge and Clark 2014). I read this article while
working on a personality treatment unit inside a prison
and decided to use my pervious experience of doing
stand up comedy to facilitate a course on comedy for
the men we work with.
This paper had many quotes that I felt would
allow me to explore the use of humour in different
environments and to make changes depending on
the group dynamics. The report used statistical data
gathered from 500 comedians who completed a
specially devised questionnaire. The findings found that
‘comedy and humour have been largely neglected’.
I decided I would attempt to further address this
neglect of comedy and humour through setting up a
dedicated group in our service.
I agreed with occupational therapy leads that
we would have a dedicated group slot each week
where men could choose to attend as part of their
occupational therapy treatment programme.
All men in our service have a programme aimed
at addressing their treatment needs; their access to
38 OTnews November 2019
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occupational therapy groups includes a key focus on
choice to try to ensure that their occupational activity
is meaningful and valued by them.
The group runs each week and it has now
continued over a number of years. On average it has
four attendees and its aims include joke structure,
examining stage persona, and communicating
in a sophisticated way with people from different
demographics.
A safe environment to explore humour
The main aim for the group was to create a safe
environment for the men to explore humour and have
fun creating ideas and concept to generate laughter.
Mora-Ripoll (2010) noted laughter as an often-
neglected resource in managing personal and
professional stress, despite proponents of ‘positive
psychology’ having identified humour and laughter as
one of the 24 positive personal ‘values and attributes’.
In the prison, it is hard to find a friendly environment
that will create a safe place for the men to experiment
with comedy.