Developing projects for practitioners and patients

We have developed programmes to improve the lives of people in a range of situations; from secure units to hospices. We have developed projects for practitioners and patients and have designed and delivered community education programmes.

Humour, laughter and health

A key element of our work are ground-breaking practitioners and patient community education programmes which explore the relationship between humour, laughter, happiness, health and wellbeing. We utilise recognised psychosocial interventions, but with a twist – humour.

Stress reducing interventions

We can help you and your organisation to enhance general health and well-being among practitioners, service users and patients. We can design interventions and programmes which reduce stress, encourage positive thinking, improve self-esteem and confidence, create hope and optimism and embed resilience and happiness.

We want to engage people in their own healthcare by showing them how to explore issues and experiences in a fun and creative way. Our cbt-based techniques help people deal with pressures and challenges without resorting to negative behaviours.

Using humour and laughter to encourage perspective in order to gain control over emotions, we have worked with:

• Thatto Heath Children’s Centre
• St Helen’s Primary Care Trust
• The Humber Centre for Forensic psychiatry
• Knowsley NHS Engagement and Involvement Services
• St Luke’s Hospice – Live well die well programme
• Addaction
• Drug and Alcohol Treatment Services
• Flintshire Community Parents & Peer Support Programme
• Crime Reduction Intervention Programmes
• Heaton Children’s Centre

Our health programmes have included public health campaigns, workshops and training programmes for service users and providers and interactive conference addresses.

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.

You may think addiction is no laughing matter. But 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.

This course has been designed to introduce Laughology techniques to participants in such a way that they can see the value and relevance of integrating the approach into their work with service users.

The course is geared towards approaches and systems already in use by, and familiar too, service providers. These included psychosocial interventions, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and ITEP mapping. The latter is gaining popularity amongst service providers as a means of visually reinforcing CBT and changing thinking patterns. The Laughology approach fits seamlessly with these interventions.

This is the first training course of its type in the UK to use Laughology techniques of humour and laughter as a means of enhancing treatment outcomes for those with substance misuse issues. Learning how to use Laughology techniques as a style of CBT in line with ITEP mapping, monitored via Treatment Outcome Profiles (TOPS) and fed into performance targets, will be of real value to those attending the course. The willingness of delegates to get involved in the activities, and the fun that ensues, underpin a rather more serious aim, that of transferring this approach into working practices and, ultimately, to the benefit of service users.

Course Aims

• Understand the theories underpinning the Laughology approach.
• Clarification of how to utilise Laughology techniques to best effect.
• Increase confidence in using Laughology techniques with service users.

Course Learning Objectives

• To understand Laughology techniques as a style of CBT.
• To identify how Laughology techniques fit with ITEP mapping.
• To explore the similarities between the brain and drugs and the brain and humour.
• To understand how humour can increase recovery capital and prevent relapse.