Can Comedy Improve Your Mental Health?

The Government is trialing out comedy prescriptions as an alternative to antidepressants. These prescriptions allow people to take workshops or watch shows. 

As someone who has researched happiness and mental health heavily as well as experienced bad batches of it, I believe this could be an alternative. Not for everyone, and not for people in crisis but it can help. Poor mental health can include feelings of loneliness, lack of confidence, feeling lost and unsure what to do.  Comedy workshops in particular allow you to feel more connected with others and explore something new.

Workshops are most beneficial for mental health for a number of reasons, which I'll explain below. Watching shows is a good way to get out of the house, into a different atmosphere and experiencing something new but I find doing rather than watching has that extra special something. 

Before we start, you should know there are lots of types of comedy workshops, from more sat around writing in stand up to silliness and physicality in clown to collaboration and spontaneity in improv to self expression and creativity in sketch. So there's a lot to try out.

Right, the stage is set so let me tell you reasons comedy workshops boost mental health:

They're welcoming and warm. 

Workshops start with a warm up, a game designed to get your head out of the office/day/home life and into the workshop. These could involve moving about and getting in your body (which if you've been sitting at a screen all day is great!) or use words, sounds or sayings. They are designed to get you used to playing, being silly and even making mistakes. You wouldn't exercise without a warm up so why not warm up before you exercise your brain?

They’re immersive and help you be present. 

It’s difficult to be in a workshop and thinking about something else, trust me. Workshops, especially improv ones, get you into flow states and being in the present moment. You have to be listening and reacting to what's happening now. For these moments, nothing else has space to be in your mind. Whilst it may sound stressful, it's actually the opposite. When the classes are full of embracing mistakes, positivity and having each other's back, these flow moments are incredible and leave you feeling recharged. 

They're active! 

Look into the room of a comedy workshop and you'll see a bunch of people standing in a circle. Improv, clown and sketch involve moving about the space, embodying different characters. Even stand-up classes have you up and moving to work on act outs and presentation!

They foster connection and new friends. 

Making friends as an adult is hard, the opportunity doesn’t come up often. You either meet people through work or friends of friends. Workshops are a great way to meet people. The improv community in particular has brought me so many new friends. You bond over characters or stories you create and it gives you wonderful talking points to hang out afterwards.

They allow you to express yourself.

Comedy is an art form, you can express yourself through your stand up jokes, characters, improv scenes and how you play with the audience as a clown. In improv especially you learn to speak instinctively, without time to control where the story is going. The story evolves as the improvisors all add to it on stage and it gives you the chance to experience different things and react how you think your character would. Improv scenes have led me to try out playing different emotions, expressing anger, happiness, stubbornness, confusion, acceptance, calmness - you name it, it's been in a scene with me. 

Comedy workshops are amazing. You don't have to want to perform on stage to get something out of them either. There are a lot of people who take numerous workshops for the sake of everything above as opposed to wanting to take to the stage full time.

Want to give it a go? There’s lots of places in London to try out comedy workshops and so many shows to see too. We teach beginners clown classes as well as play workshops which take some of the exercises from comedy with less of the teaching points - these are a great way to dip your toes into it. You can also check out places like Hoopla for improv and The Fun Fed for more play workshops or our recommends page for other schools and teachers.