The Debate on Medical Hypnosis

Despite evidence that hypnotherapy can alleviate patients’ physical and psychological symptoms such as pain, IBS, migraine and anxiety, the medical debate continues on whether or not to include it as a valid therapeutic intervention in the UK.

Studies examining hypnotherapy’s role in anaesthesia found that people using hypnosis required a third less the amount of anaesthesia and reported pain as being half as intense.  Furthermore, 88% of paediatric patients using hypnotherapy reported less frequent headaches than they usually experienced.

I have first-hand reports from several clients, coming to see me for a completely unrelated reason, who immediately feel no more pain from their sore shoulder, sore back, sore joints etc.  The relaxation process involved has often caused this positive side effect!

Nevertheless, in light of growing evidence for its effectiveness, and despite David Spiegel’s appeal to NIHCE to sanction hypnotherapy for a wide range of conditions, Dr. Steve Field, chairman of the United Kingdom’s Royal College of General Practitioners, publicly rebutted the assertions.

It’s about time the National Council for Hypnotherapy made a real stand for hypnotherapy to be used as standard within the NHS.  In the US, children’s hospitals usually have one or two hypnosis practitioners available.

Hospitals and illness are often stressful, adding to, and even causing, pain levels to rise.  It just makes sense for hospitals to employ people who know how to lessen this negative experience.

Hypnotherapy is cost-effective too!  It would save a fortune in unnecessary pain killers and other medication which people rely on to feel better.  I am continually astounded by the attitude of GPs who hand out anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication without any kind of psychotherapy or evaluation of a patient’s current circumstances.  More often than not, patients end up putting unnecessary chemicals into their body and describe how they simply become ‘numb’ to their environment.  Their environment does not change, only their ability to interact with it.  Techniques used in psychotherapies, like cognitive-behavioural hypnotherapy, are designed to tackle the patient’s issue and deal with it head on, eradicating the problem without any unnecessary chemical intervention.  It’s a no-brainer!

Click here to read the Canadian Medical Association Journal article “The Therapeutic Value of Hyper-Suggestibility”