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Lee and Sohn: The Effects of Laughter Therapy on Anger, Anger Expressions and Mental Status After Oil Spill in Victimized Community Residence
Original Article

Journal of Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 2010; 19(2): 186-195.

Published online: 30 June 2010

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12934/jkpmhn.2010.19.2.186

The Effects of Laughter Therapy on Anger, Anger Expressions and Mental Status After Oil Spill in Victimized Community Residence

Yong Mi Lee1, Jung Nam Sohn2

1Assistant Professor, Department of Nursing, Kangwon National University, Korea.

2Professor, Department of Nursing, Hanseo University, Korea.

Address reprint requests to: Sohn, Jung Nam, Department of Nursing, Hanseo University, 360 Daegokri Haemimyeon, Seosan-city, 356-706, Chungcheongnam-do, Korea. Tel: 82-41-660-1072, Fax: 041-660-1087, jnsohn@hanseo.ac.kr

Received 4 May 2010       Revised 8 June 2010       Accepted 9 June 2010

© 2010 The Korean Academy of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing

(open-access):

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Purpose

This study was done to evaluate the effects of laughter therapy in victimized community residence and to suggest that the practice is an effective nursing intervention to reduce anger, anger expression and to improve mental health.

Methods

The research design was a non-synchronized design with a nonequivalent control group. Laughter therapy was used as the experimental treatment from March 21 to April 16 2009. The 31research participants were assigned to an experimental (15) or control (16) group. Laughter therapy was administered four times to the experimental group. Data analysis was done with SPSS/win 17.0 for Mann-Whitney U test and ANCOVA.

Results

There were significant changes in the level of trait anger and somatization. There were no significant changes in the level of anger expression, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, psychosis, obsessive-compulsive, paranoid and interpersonal sensitivity.

Conclusion

These results show that laughter therapy is an effective nursing intervention to decrease the level of trait anger and somatization.

Keywords: Laughter, Anger, Mental health

Figures and Tables

Table 1

Homogeneity Test for General Characteristics between Experimental and Control Group (N=31)

jkapmhn-19-186-i001

Exp.=experimental group; Cont.=Control group.

†Fisher's exact test; ‡t-test.

Table 2

Homogeneity Test for Dependent Variables before Laughter Therapy between Experimental and Control Group (N=31)

jkapmhn-19-186-i002

Exp=experimental group; Cont=control group.

†Mann-Whitney test.

Table 3

Comparison of the Variables between Experimental and Control Groups

jkapmhn-19-186-i003

Exp=experimental group; Cont=control group.

†ANCOVA.

Notes

This work was supported by Taean Environmental Health Center Research Fund 2009.

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