Time for your tests kid!
Posted on 12/26/2007 6:19:51 AM PST by Kaslin
Don't send in the clowns
Hospitals are being urged not to decorate children's wards with paintings of clowns in case they upset young patients.
State-funded research has found that in a survey of more than 250 children aged four to 16, all disliked the use of clowns in hospital decor, with even the teenagers seeing them as "scary".
"Given that children and young people do not find hospitals frightening per se - and only express fear about those spaces associated with needles - this finding is somewhat ironic," said Dr Penny Curtis of Sheffield University.
The aim of the Space to Care study, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, was to ensure children's needs are part of hospital planning.
Researchers discovered that, although children appreciated colourful walls and ceilings, many found the decor babyish.
The fear of clowns, known as coulrophobia, can cause panic attacks, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat, sweating, nausea and feelings of dread.
It is one of the 10 most searched-for phobias on Yahoo! search engine.
Earlier this year, organisers of a music festival had to change their fancy dress circus theme after some ticket holders told them they had a phobia of clowns.
The Bestival, held on the Isle of Wight, had asked festival-goers to turn up in curly wigs and large shoes.
Psychologists who have addressed coulrophobia say it usually develops out of some traumatic incident in childhood associated with a clown.
Another factor is the representation of evil clowns in films such as Stephen King's It.
Tony Eldridge, secretary of Clowns International, said their make-up had been toned down in recent years.
Clowns traditionally wore exaggerated make-up so that they could be seen from the back of a theatre or circus, but now that most did children's parties, the make-up did not have to be so loud, he said.
It would be sad if hospitals no longer had pictures of clowns, added Mr Eldridge, who is also a director of the Clown Museum in London.
"We live in a world where everything is banned and it has got rather silly."
Time for your tests kid!
Stephen King ruined the clown business for a few bucks. Damn him.
I always hated clowns. There was something about something that looked somewhat human but not quite that really bothered me.
Interesting, also, that the kids found the decor *babyish*.
Funny how adults have all these ideas about what kids like and nobody ever bothers to ask the kids before all the time and effort is wasted.
Can’t sleep, the clowns will eat me...can’t sleep, the clowns will eat me...
Coulrophobia - who knew it had a name.
Bump from all us Clown-o-phobes! (shudder!!)
Got a light kid?
Of course kids don’t like clowns! One got too close to my little brother at the circus and he hit the clown with his cotton candy. The clown got mad and cursed at him. Clowns are ugly and scary!
John Wayne Gacey , one of the more famous clowns.
Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Nancy Pelosi, A clown with or without makeup.
They are ALL unnatural - same goes with their French cousins, the Mimes!
I just always thought they were stupid and not very funny.
No, the fear of clowns goes back at least to the renaissance when the harlequin was a comic figure based on the medieval depiction of an evil emissary of the devil. King merely tapped into a pre-existing intuitive archetype.
Uh-oh dude, they’re talkin smack aboutcha! ;o)
A very long time ago, the paper where I lived carried the “Rose is Rose” comic strip, and in it, Rose’s little son was terrified of clowns.
In real life, my daughter was afraid of clowns when she was a child. Nothing I could think of to say seemed to help.
I was always afraid of nuns. I had countless nightmares about them.
Originally they were depicted as stupid, gluttonous, but physically agile. IOW, clownish.
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