Laughter therapy really could boost your emotional well-being

Structured interventions that encourage a good giggle, whether they are laughter yoga or clown visits, could have health benefits

By Elizabeth Hlavinka

7 August 2025

Letting off steam at a laughter yoga session in Kolkata, India

SOPA Images Limited/Alamy

It seems that laughter therapy is no joke. Structured interventions that aim to tickle our funny bone, like laughter yoga or hospital clowns, really do appear to reduce anxiety and improve life satisfaction.

Laughter, which is also common in non-human animals, is thought to enforce social connections and may even help babies acquire a sense of self. It has also been linked to improved health, with researchers finding that clown visits shorten the amount of time children spend in hospital.

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Yelsyn-Mauricio Porras-Jiménez at the University of Jaén in Spain wanted to understand how we can better support people’s overall health – “not just the physical, but also the spiritual and emotional”, he says. “In the midst of searching for how to truly implement this comprehensive care, I came across laughter therapy.”

Porras-Jiménez and his colleagues carried out a meta-analysis of 33 studies done in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Many of the participants were nursing students, but they also included people undergoing end-of-life care, surgery or in vitro fertilisation, as well as individuals with depression or burnout.

All of the studies were made up of two groups: one received some form of laughter therapy – such as doing laughter yoga, which combines the physical activity with laughter exercises; being visited by a clown; watching funny films; or taking part in guided group laughing sessions – while the second group acted as the control, receiving either no intervention or carrying on with their usual care.