Twenty survivors of the February 2023 earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people across southern Turkiye and northern Syria were given an unusual instruction: record 60 seconds of laughter, then play it back and laugh along with it, three times a day, for two weeks.
The technique is called the Laughie, short for Laugh Intentionally Everyday. It requires no joke, no comedian, and no reason to be amused. Participants laughed on command, alone or with others, using a recording as a prompt. The pilot results were published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, and this year the study was added to ClinicalTrials.gov as the research group expanded the method into randomized trials.
