Looking to treat dementia or depression? Try a stand-up comedy class
Craic Health Founder CEO Lu Jackson features in the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Weekend Magazine (Photo by John Davis)
This article originally appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend Magazine
Looking to treat dementia or depression? Try a stand-up comedy class
Laughter is the best medicine – and the doctor may soon prescribe it.
By Amy Fallon, 16 July, 2026
Full article available via the button below. This is an excerpt.
Tracy was at the front of a room inside London’s majestic Royal Albert Hall, a stand-up star in the making. As a homeless woman trying to survive on the city’s unrelenting streets, she was used to being invisible. But for one afternoon in March, all eyes were on her – and she was bringing this house down, so to speak.
“I looked over and I saw the most beaming human being,” says Louisa Jackson (or “Lu”, as she’s better known), a London-based Australian tech entrepreneur. “To me, it was a lightbulb moment; I want to cry thinking about it. She wasn’t just happy to perform, she was a part of something. I’ll never forget the look on her face, and I was going, ‘Yeah, what we’re doing is making a massive difference to people’s lives.’ ”
Tracy came to comedy via an unusual path, thanks to a workshop that Jackson produced as part of a trial being conducted in the UK that she hopes will lead to her stand-up lessons being prescribed on the country’s National Health Service (NHS) for rough sleepers, those experiencing bereavement, dementia patients and other trauma-affected people.
Jackson, originally from Brisbane, is the founder of creative technology platform Craic and now she is having a crack – with Craic Health, helping people who are struggling and easing the pressure on the NHS with what she calls “comedy on prescription”. She wants to bring it to Australia, too.
“I say to people we’ve never been more connected with technology, but we’ve never been more disconnected from one another,” says the 44-year-old expat. Jackson tells me about a photo she’s just seen of a man playing chess on his computer at a communal table in a park, alone, which has gone viral on X. “It is such a good meme for the times.”
Although not a comedian herself, Jackson is a lover of stand-up and in 2002 co-founded VidZone, one of the world’s first online music video streaming services. Having now established Craic, described by the UK’s Women in Tech Policy network as “the global operating system for comedy” and a leader in comedy industry technologies, she’s planning to use Craic Health as a “comedy-on-prescription hub”, listing certified providers, comedy events (including for seniors, veterans and new parents), bookable services, such as corporate wellbeing sessions, plus online courses and other useful information.
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