Effects of the Integrated-based Laughing Qigong Program on Resilience in Community-dwelling Older Adults

National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences

Status: Completed

Conditions: Community-dwelling Older Adults

Treatments: Behavioral: Integrated-based Laughing Qigong Program

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05779371

FJU-IRB C106177

Details and patient eligibility

About

Laughter programs are safe, affordable, and age-appropriate activities. Few studies have utilized mixed study designs to look at the impact on resilience in and experiences of participants in such activities.

Full description

A high level of resilience can also help to mitigate the negative effects of stress and promote personal adaptation. According to a prior study, the resilience scale can be used to screen and identify maladaptive people before they cause problems, allowing for the development of preventive interventions (Wells, 2012). Some researchers have used cross talk and laughter therapy in patients with depression and reported that the negative symptoms of their mental health were alleviated (Yoshikawa et al., 2019), and laughter therapy for disabled adolescents improved their resilience (Shinde, & Kotekar, 2022). Another researcher discovered through interviews that older adults who laugh can maintain their personal health and age successfully (Lewis, 2021), but there is currently little research on how laughter affects the resilience of older adults.

Previous research applied laughter as a mental health-promoting activity, called the Laughter Qigong program, to promote mental health and generate positive effects on both physical and mental well-being (Hsieh et al., 2015). According to Kuru Alc, Zorba Bahceli, and Emirolu (2018), laughter intervention is risk-free, inexpensive, and beneficial for promoting the mental health of older adults. It has been used successfully with these people in long-term care facilities (Hsieh et al, 2015). The IB-LQP was administered twice weekly for four weeks to older adults living in institutions. It was discovered to have a positive impact on stress cortisol levels (Hsieh et al., 2015), as well as the ability to lessen death fear and enhance loneliness (Kuru Alc, Zorba Bahceli, & Emirolu, 2018). The research on laughter-based interventions for community senior citizens is still in its early stages, and more research is needed to fully understand how senior citizens participate in locally tailored activities.

Enrollment: 39 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 65+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

(1) age of ≧ 65 years, (2) ability to travel to the location of the activities on their own (independent or partially dependent people with daily activities), and (3) willingness to participate in this activity intervention

Exclusion criteria

(1) Severe hearing or sensory deficits that cause communication barriers, (2) diagnosis of depression, and (3) hospitalization plans in the next three months.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

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39 participants in 2 patient groups

Experimental group

Active Comparator group

Description:

Experiment group A accepted the Integrated-based Laughing Qigong Program (IB-LQP) During the intervention, the participants formed a standing circle and could make eye contact. The time was divided into 10 minutes of warm-up (deep breathing, stretching of muscles, expressing various emotions on the face, stretching of limbs) and 30-40 minutes of main exercise (Breathing and Laughing Qigong practice). The main exercise included using the natural breath of laughter to activate the body, turning a fake smile into a real smile and laughter, using different body movements at the same time, producing a variety of types of laughter, and conducting self-emotional awareness and emotional transformation drills to reduce the backlog.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Integrated-based Laughing Qigong Program

control group

No Intervention group

Description:

The control group received no intervention and was asked to maintain their current lifestyle for 6 weeks following the baseline test.