The Effects of Laughter Yoga Practice on Anxiety and Sleep Quality in Elderly Patients With Parkinson's disease

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a period of laughter yoga trainings on anxiety and sleep quality in in Elderly patients with Parkinson’s disease.this study was a semi empirical and an applied research. The statistical populations of this study were 24 patients (55-75 years old) with Parkinson’s disease who were referring to Rasoul Akram Hospital in Tehran city. Subjects were randomly divided into the control group (N=12) and experimental group (N=12). The instrument of this study was the Beck Anxiety Inventory (1988) and Pittsburgh sleep quality questionnaire (1989). The experimental group received an intervention for 8 weeks, two sessions in per week (45 minutes) under an official and expert coach’s supervision in addition to usual medical treatment. The collected data was analyzed by the Mann–Whitney U and Shapiro-Wilk test. the results of this study showed that a period of laughter yoga trainings led to a significant reduction of anxiety in patients with Parkinson’s disease (P=0.000). Also, this intervention led to a significant increasing of sleep quality (P=0.000), subjective sleep quality (P=0.003), and sleep latency (P=0.008), but there was no significant difference in sleep duration (P=0.755), sleep efficiency (P=0.242), sleep disturbances (P=0.068), use of sleeping medication, and daytime dysfunction (P=0.755) subscales. the results of this study showed that the intervention of laughter yoga practice can use as a complementary treatment alongside other treatment methods to reduce anxiety and improve sleep quality in patients with Parkinson’s disease.