Beneficial effect of laughter therapy on physiological and psychological function in elders

Abstract

AimIn the present study we investigated the effect of laughter therapy on physiological and psychological function in older people.DesignAn open‐label trial.MethodsSeventeen older people who regularly attended an elderly day care centre were recruited. Stand‐up comedy as laughter therapy was performed once a week for 4 weeks. Parameters of physiological and psychological function were evaluated before and after laughter therapy.ResultsLaughter therapy intervention resulted in a significant reduction in systolic blood pressure and heart rate, accompanied by a significant increase in plasma concentration of serotonin and a significant decrease in salivary concentration of chromogranin A. Questionnaire surveys of SF‐8, GDS‐15, and Vitality Index demonstrated alleviation of depression and improvement of sociability and activity in older people. Laughter therapy could be expected to become a practical treatment to improve quality of life of older people in an elderly day care centre.

The Effects of Laughter Therapy for the Relief of Employment-Stress in Korean Student Nurses by Assessing Psychological Stress Salivary Cortisol and Subjective Happiness

“…In contrast, the results of this current study are not in line with research on breast cancer mastectomy patients, and the stress experienced by obese women [19,35], stress experienced by middle-aged women [34], and the stress reduction effect experienced by nurses in burns units [36] showed conflicting results to this current study by reporting that laughter therapy did not have an effect on reducing serum cortisol levels [19,34,35].…”

“…Laughter therapy has been shown to affect the brain and the autonomic nervous system, cause physiological changes and emotional responses [15,19], and reduce depression and anxiety, and positively alter negative emotions, particularly for aiding stress relief [17]. Research on the use of laughter therapy has been reported in patients with cancer, and diabetes [18][19][20][21].…”

Effect of an Integrated Healthcare Program for Korean Rural Older Adults: A Quasi-Experimental Study

“…Although prior studies on health management programs for rural older adults focused on disease, loneliness, and poverty [2], they did not examine the multifaceted nature of the older adults and focused instead on single programs such as exercise [21][22][23], music [24,25], art [26], horticultural therapy [27], and laughter therapy [15]. Furthermore, although these programs may reduce cortisol [27] and improve physical function [21][22][23]27], cognitive function [23], and depressive disorders [21,26], they were restricted to analyzing the pre-and posttests of the experimental group [28], and did not investigate the subjects' needs [23,26,28] or develop a systematic program [10,27].…”

Practical ways for coaches to reduce their stress and avoid burnout

“…However, long-term chewing or chomping gum may result in jaw discomfort (Farella et al, 2001). Laughter and humor have been found to reduce stress (Yoshikawa et al, 2018), and viewing a video of a stand-up routine or reading the comics section of the newspaper will aid in relaxation and mood improvement. A final unexpected method to reduce stress is to watch fish swim in an aquarium (Cracknell et al, 2015).…”