Life too important to take seriously, says humor advocate Lila Green. (Family Matters)

Lila Green is a very funny lady who is quite serious about one thing - promoting the use of humor to improve the quality of life in the long-term health care setting.

At the AAHA Annual Meeting in Orlando, Lila, a program coordinator with the University of Michigan's Institute of Gerontology, presented "The Queen Meets Lila Green." Dressed as Queen Elizabeth, she served up a "slightly irreverent" version of the 40th birthday celebration for Prince Charles. I interviewed Lila after her presentation.

"Humor is something I've used all my life as a coping mechanism," she said. "I have five children, and I don't think I ever would have survived without a good sense of humor. So when I joined the Institute of Gerontology staff and began visiting nursing homes, one of the first things I noticed was the lack of opportunity for laughter, either among the residents or between the residents and family visitors and staff."

Visiting a special residential setting foreIderly people with Alzheimer's disease, Lila was fascinated to discover that people who couldn't remember the name of their spouse or children were often able to sing a funny old song or tell an amusing old story from start to finish. And they enjoyed that experience.

"What fascinated me was that something about the emotional memory of shared laughter still remained when other memory had disappeared. At a time like that I could see that residents and family were able to relax and break the tension. It just seemed to smooth so many rough edges when people laughed or smiled together as a family unit. So I started researching humor, and wound up enrolling in humor school."

She really did! Lila attended a weeklong seminar at The Humor Project in Saratoga Springs, New York. She also went to many other conferences and workshops, and read extensively on the subject.

"When I began to talk in health and long-term care settings about the value and benefits of humor, laughter and playfulness, people seemed so pleased with the presentation. What I saw was that I was giving people permission to laugh. I was legitimizing humor as a coping mechanism. I've done this for five or six years now, and months or years later I get feedback that some of the ideas, suggestions and techniques have been implemented. It's simple, inexpensive, and it works! It's wonderful."