•  
  •  
 

Manipal Journal of Nursing and Health Sciences

Abstract

Introduction: The elderly population is increasing in the world and some of them are forced to stay in old age homes. Low morale, which is a sign of depression, can result from overlooking their medical and social problems as a part of normal ageing. Objectives: The objectives of the study were to find out the effect of “laughter yoga” on the morale of the elderly living in old age homes of Kottayam district and to identify the relationship between selected baseline variables and morale. Methods: Study participants were 153 elderlies, above 60 years of age, from randomly selected old age homes. Basic pre-test and post-test experimental designs with biweekly measurements were carried out using Philadelphia Geriatric Centre Morale Scale. Six days of 30 minutes laughter yoga sessions were administered for eight weeks in the experimental group. Results: Pre-test morale scores were low in both the groups. The experimental group showed gradual improvement on morale (c2=30.218, df=4, p= .000). There was significant association between physical dependence (c2 =16.992, df=4, p= .002), forced placement in old age home (c2=24.592, df=1, p= .000), duration of stay in the old age home (c2=16.221, df=8, p= .39) and morale. Conclusion: Dependency for activities of daily living was found to be associated with low morale. Voluntary admission to old age home and the duration of stay for two to three years were found to be high in morale. Laughter yoga was found to be effective in improving morale among elderly old age home residents.

Included in

Nursing Commons

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.