Introduction. Taking care of a person with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has family, social and economic implications; particularly the well being and health of the principal caregiver is often disrupted. Nursing interventions can promote well being of the caregivers, but in Mexico there is a lack of knowledge in this regard.

Objectives. Promote positive adaptation represented by a positive attitude towards caregiving, reduction of anxiety and healthful use of humor on Mexican family caregivers of persons with AD through a nursing intervention aimed at the modification of negative thoughts about caretaking and appreciation of pleasant activities. Roy's Adaptation Model (RAM) served as the theoretical background for this research.

Materials and methods. An eight week with one month follow up quasi-experimental design with four groups using a repeated measures analysis. Experimental conditions were:    a) total intervention, integrated by the cognitive-behavioral and laughter exercise components (n₁ = 12); b) cognitive-behavioral component (n₂ = 10);  c) laughter exercise component   (n₃ = 11); conditions compared to a control group (n₄ = 13).

Findings.Toward the end of the intervention, repeated measure ANOVAS showed significant effects of the two groups with the cognitive-behavioral component on improvement of attitude toward caregiving (both p < .001), reduction of anxiety (both p = .002), and bad mood (both p ≤ .027); and increase of self enhancing humor (both p = .002) in comparison to the other two groups. These effects remained significant on the first month of follow up.