Effects of Visiting Laughter Therapy on Depression and Insomnia among the Vulnerable Elderly

Eunok Park

doi:10.12799/jkachn.2013.24.2.205

Journal List > J Korean Acad Community Health Nurs > v.24(2) > 1058303

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Park: Effects of Visiting Laughter Therapy on Depression and Insomnia among the Vulnerable Elderly

Original Article

Journal of Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing

Journal of Korean Academy of Community Health Nursing 2013; 24(2): 205-213.

Published online: 30 June 2013

DOI: https://doi.org/10.12799/jkachn.2013.24.2.205

Effects of Visiting Laughter Therapy on Depression and Insomnia among the Vulnerable Elderly

Eunok Park

College of Nursing, Jeju National University, Jeju, Korea.

Corresponding author: Park, Eunok. College of Nursing, Jeju National University, 66 Jejudaehak-ro, Ara 1-dong, Jeju 690-756, Korea. Tel: +82-64-754-3882, Fax: +82-64-702-2686, eopark@jejunu.ac.kr

Received 21 July 2012 Accepted 18 June 2013

(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

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of visiting laughter therapy on depression and insomnia in the vulnerable elderly.

Methods

A quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design was used for this study. The participants were 87 elderly who were registered in the Tailored Visiting Health Program of public health centers. Data were collected from September to November 2010. The experimental group received visiting laughter therapy froma visiting nurse who had taken laughter training provided by laughter therapy experts. The experimental group received 10~15 min of laughter therapy once a week for 8 weeks. The instruments included Geriatric Depression Scale and Insomnia Severity Index to measure depression and sleep problems before and after the laughter therapy.

Results

The results showed that visiting laughter therapy was effective in decreasing depression and insomnia among the vulnerable elderly.

Conclusion

These findings indicate that laughter therapy may be an effective nursing intervention to improve depression and insomnia Further studies would be needed to identify the difference of effects according to time, interval, or period of visiting laughter therapy and to evaluate the lasting effect of visiting laughter therapy.

Keywords: Laughter therapy, Depression, Sleep initiation and maintenance disorders, Aged

Figures and Tables

Table 1

General Characteristics and Homogeneity

Exp.=experimental group; Cont.=control group.

Table 2

Homogeneity test for Depression and Insomnia at the Pretest

Exp.=experimental group; Cont.=control group.

Table 3

Depression and Insomnia with ANCOVA results between Two Groups at the posttest

Exp.=experimental group; Cont.=control group.

^†Covariate: Pretest score.

Table 4

Visiting Laughter Therapy

Notes

This paper were written using data from the project 'Development of intervention program for the depressed amon vulnerable population' supported by Jeju Special Self-governing Province and used a part of the report with revision.

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