TERAPI TAWA UNTUK MENURUNKAN STRES PADA PENDERITA HIPERTENSI

Hypertension is a physical condition which has relationship to stress. Stress causes blood tension rise and becomes one of the causes to hypertension. Therefore, besides medical intervention, the client needs non medical therapy. This research aims to know about the effectiveness of laugh therapy to decrease stress and blood pressure of hypertension patient. The subject of this research is hypertension patient. Laughter therapy will be conducted in three weeks in 6 meetings, by the duration 1-2 hours of each meeting. The measurements used are interview, scales, observation, self-monitoring sheet, and sphygmomanometer. The measurement result shows significance differences of stress score between experimental groups and control groups, Z = -2,287 (p < 0.05), and systolic blood tension Z= -2,913 (p < 0.05). This result shows that laughter therapy is able to decrease stress rate, and used as alternative therapy to assist controlling systolic blood tension to hypertension patient