Laughter is the best medicine!

„It’s more than a smile. It’s hope!“

As the first association of its kind in Europe, CliniClowns Austria has been working in hospitals in Austria since 1991 to make their patients’ stay in hospital easier and to speed up their recovery.

CliniClowns visit chronically and seriously ill children at their hospital beds and take them on a journey to a land of fantasy, where there is no pain, no sadness, and no illness. Laughter rules the land, and when the patients return to fight their illness with renewed vigour and strength, the CliniClowns have achieved their goal!

Since 1994, the CliniClowns have also been visiting adult patients and, since 1997, residents in geriatric centers to encourage them with humour therapy, intensify their social contacts and fight isolation and loneliness.

Did you know?

• Since 1991, the clowns have visited more than 1.6 million patients and provided 8 million minutes of laughter – which translates into 472,800,000 seconds of laughter.
• CliniClowns have about 70 clowns working in more than 50 hospitals and nursing homes, making more than 1,600 visits per year.
• Children laugh or smile an average of 400 times a day – adults, by comparison, only an average of 15 times.
• A single act of laughing activates up to 300 muscles in the body.
• Laughter strengthens the immune system, activates messenger substances, boosts metabolism, releases happiness hormones and reduces the production of stress hormones.

Do you want to become active yourself?

If you want to support CliniClowns, you will find all the necessary information on the website:

I would like to support CliniClowns

---

This year, our Christmas card was again designed by “VOI – the association for original inclusion“. The drawing is by Barbara Plak.