THE INFLUENCE OF LAUGHTER THERAPY ON STRESS AMONG NURSING STUDENTS OF RESPATI YOGYAKARTA UNIVERSITY

Abstract

Clinical education in nursing might cause students to get stressed. A preliminary study conducted in Respati Yogya karta University (UNRIYO) found out that 37.5% of them showed moderate stress, and 5.52% of them indicated normal stress. Laughter therapy is a therapy to overcome stress. UNRIYO has offered counseling for stress management but has not yet provided a therapy program for the students. This makes the researcher interested in laughter therapy to deal with stress among the students. The objective of this research is to identify the influence of laughter therapy on stress among nursing students of Respati Yogyakarta University. This was a quasi-experimental research with pre and posttest design with a non-equivalent control group. A quota sampling technique was used to collect data from 42 student. The Wilcoxon test was carried out for the intervention group, while the paired t-test was conducted for the control group. The independent sample t-test then used to find out the significance value between the intervention and control groups. Stress score is calculated between pre and posttest on both group. Pre-test score of intervention group was 13.00 and posttest score was 9.52. Pretest score of control group was 17.29 and post test score was 14.33. There was a difference in the score between intervention and control group( p-value = 0,000).

Keywords: depression anxiety stress, nursing student, laughter therapy