Recovery for service users

Being able to laugh and have a sense of humour is a life-skill that is essential to a healthy balance between mind and body. Laughology’s techniques are now being employed to benefit people in drug treatment by taking a practical approach to how humour processing can help people achieve whatever goals they set themselves.  

Red noses and floppy hats!

Before you get the wrong idea, Laughology training is not about cracking jokes, red noses and big floppy boots, or forced jollification of any kind. It is about identifying and tapping into the good humour innate in all of us and using this to orient thinking and behaviour towards positive outcomes. It utilises recognised psychosocial interventions, but with a twist – humour. We all have our own sense of humour, what seems funny to one person can go completely over the head of another. Working with an individual to harness the power of their particular sense of humour truly is ‘personalised treatment’.  

CBT-based techniques

Laughology’s unique CBT-based techniques provide an effective aid to help deal with pressures and challenges without necessarily resorting to alcohol or drugs. Using these techniques increases the individual’s confidence when needing to think through challenges they face by themselves. It gives them a psychological toolbox for use with other people and to be resilient and flexible in all situations.

Laughology uses humour processing to create different emotional responses linked to an individual’s cognitive processes and, thereby, has a positive effect on behaviours. Helping people to feel positive by recognising happiness in their own lives, where it is and how to be in control of it, will enhance their hopes for the future.   “I think Laughology has a massive relevance and is a good way of enabling changes we want for our service users.” - Service provider.  

Humour and well-being

A key element of Laughology’s work is its groundbreaking health, community and education programmes that explore the relationship between, humour, laughter, health and wellbeing. Laughter and humour as a thought pattern can be broken down into a process that can be adapted to improve skills of awareness, introspection and evaluation.

This has been very successful in work undertaken at The Humber Centre, a secure psychiatric unit, by changing both the ethos and environment of this institution to benefit service users.  

“When I first started using drugs, it was just a laugh. But after a few years, when I really got into it, I realised it wasn’t funny at all. This course has made me remember that laughter and feeling good, in myself, is such a powerful tool.” - Ex-service user.  

Following this seminar, participants will:

• Understand the positive effect humour and laughter has on the mind and body and how to use this as a cognitive behavioural technique to change negative patterns.          
• Understand the role of Laughology as a style of psychosocial intervention. Understand the link between the neurological actions of both laughter and drugs.
• Know how to increase personal recovery capital through humour.            
• Understand the role of humour in improving the quality of life of all clients, in all types of treatment.