Evaluating the impact of laughter therapy on hope, self-efficacy, and pain control in patients with chronic low back pain Download PDF

Background and objective: Lower back pain is a common skeletal-muscular disorder, so that nearly 80% of people experience it during their lives. The onset of this pain is gradual and it lasts for long time and often lasts for more than three months. Patient response to this therapy is limited. Its cause might be known well. It affects the self-efficacy and hope of patients. As taking drug is costly and has side effects, alternative therapies are always considered. Among these therapies, we can refer to emotional therapy of laughter therapy. In the current research, the researchers aim to evaluate the impact of laughter therapy on hope, self-efficacy, and pain control in patients with chronic low back pain. Methods: The current research was a semi-experimental study conducted based on a pre-test-post-test design with one experiment group and one control group. To determine the sample size, convenient sampling method was used to assign the 30 patients, admitted to Ferdows Physiotherapy Centers, into experiment group (n=15) and control group (n=15). To collect the data, Miller Hope Questionnaire (1988), Nicholas Self-efficacy Questionnaire (1989), Pain Control Scale, which is 10-point scale, and laughter intervention approved by Package, were used. Finally, the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 22 and at 95% confidence level. Findings: multivariate covariance analysis findings revealed that laughter therapy increased the post-test scores of hope and self-efficacy in the experimental group, reduced pain control scores, and improved the patients' health status (p 0.001), indicating the impact of laughter therapy on increasing the hope and self-efficacy and reducing the pain in the experimental group compared to control group (p ≥0.001). Discussion and conclusion: This research revealed that laughter therapy can have a positive impact on hope, self-efficacy, and pain control of the patients, and laughter therapy can be used as a simple, low-cost, and non-invasive method in patients with chronic low back pain