Background: Stress is any challenge to homoeostasis. It is a self-reported mental state that challenges the body's internal sense of balance. Various precipitating factors have been identified to cause stress. Among them physiological, emotional, biological, cultural etc. cause stress and manifested as anxiety, depression, inability to concentrate, helplessness etc. Students in all ages and time have been found to be a population vulnerable to stress. Factors like academic pressure, new environment, time management, disciplinary life style etc. are the causes of stress for students. Researchers revealed that nursing students top the list of students in experiencing stress. Objectives: The research was conducted to assess the effect of laughter therapy on stress level of 1" year nursing students of a selected college of nursing.

Methodology: A quasi experimental research work was undertaken to analyze the effectiveness of laughter therapy on the stress level of the study subjects. The data was collected from 36 1" year B.Sc. Nursing students selected by convenience sampling technique. A pretest post-test design without a control group was adopted in the study. A questionnaire was developed for assessing the stress of students. The tool was validated and reliability tested.

Result: The findings of the research showed significant reduction of stress after 5 days laughter therapy. The percentage of subjects experiencing significant stress before the therapy reduced from 8.3 to 5.5%. Laughter therapy reduced the moderated level of stress from 30.6 to 16.7%.

Conclusion: The present based on the findings of the current study we can draw the conclusion that laughter as a therapy can be used in reduction of stress, In addition it can be also concluded from the study that the phenomena of stress is common among selected nursing students.