Laughter therapy for patients with cancer.

Humor is an important part of life. Care should be taken to ensure that humor persists even during the bleakest times for patients, families, and medical personnel. Laughter eases the mind, defuses tension among people, and has positive physiologic effects on patients. Facilitated nursing intervention with humor helps to inject this important facet of life into difficult scenes. One successful approach to introducing humor into the hospital setting is a hall-roving "Laugh Mobile." Its humorous novelties, books, and films help divert the attention of suffering patients to lighter thoughts.