Elsevier

Archives of Psychiatric Nursing

Volume 41, December 2022, Pages 271-276
Archives of Psychiatric Nursing

The effect of online laughter therapy on depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness among nursing students during the Covid-19 pandemic

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apnu.2022.09.006Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Laughter therapy is a non-invasive and non-pharmacological complementary medicine technique.

  • This is the first study in which laughter yoga with a pretest-posttest control group was conducted online.

  • Laughter therapy can be applied online for students' mental health.

  • Laughter therapy reduced depression during the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • Laughter therapy can be integrated into nursing education.

Abstract

Background

Nursing students experienced mental symptoms when they switched to distance education due to the pandemic.

Aims

This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of online laughter therapy sessions on depression, anxiety, stress, and loneliness levels in first-year nursing students.

Methods

In this randomized controlled trial, 61 healthy nursing students were randomly assigned to intervention (n = 32) and control groups (n = 29). The intervention group received online laughter therapy twice weekly for four weeks. The control group received no intervention. The data were collected using a demographic questionnaire, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, and the De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale at the study initiation and week four in both groups.

Results

There was no difference between the mean scores of the groups in the pre-test (p > 0.05). There was a statistically significant difference between groups in terms of depression after online laughter therapy sessions (p < 0.05), but there was no significant difference between anxiety, stress, and loneliness levels (p > 0.05).

Conclusions

Online laughter therapy sessions significantly reduced depression but had no effect on anxiety, stress, and loneliness. During the COVID-19 pandemic, online laughter therapy can be organized to reduce depression levels.

Keywords

Laughter therapy
Nursing student
Depression
Anxiety
Stress
Loneliness
Yoga

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