What We Can Do with Hypnosis: A Brief Note

International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis

Contemporary Hypnosis, 2003

From 444 studies published until 2002 that investigated the efficacy of hypnosis, 57 randomised clinical studies were selected that compared patients treated exclusively by hypnosis to an untreated control group (or to a group of patients treated by conventional medical procedures). The 57 studies were integrated into a meta-analysis that yielded a weighted average post-treatment effect size of d = 0.56 (medium effect size). For hypnotic treatment of ICD-10 codable disorders (32 studies) the calculation of the weighted mean effect size resulted in d = 0.63. These estimates are conservative since all variables of a given study were used. Most of the studies employed methods of the classic approach to hypnosis. In order to obtain an estimate to which extent non-clinical factors (design-quality, way of comparison of dependent variables) have an influence on the effect sizes, effect sizes were computed for all studies of the original 444 studies that reported the necessary statistical information (N = 133). For those studies with an average effect size of d = 1.07 a massive influence of non-clinical factors was demonstrated with a range from d = 0.56 for randomised studies with group comparisons to d = 2.29 for non-randomised studies using pre-postcomparisons. Out of the 57 randomised studies, only 6 studies reported numerical values for the correlation between hypnotic suggestibility and treatment outcome with a mean correlation of r = .44.

2021

Research on the efficacy of hypnosis applications continues to grow, but there remain major gaps between the science and clinical practice. One challenge has been a lack of consensus on what applications of hypnosis are efficacious based on research evidence. In 2018, six major hypnosis organizations collaborated to form a Task Force for Establishing Efficacy Standards for Clinical Hypnosis. This paper describes a Guideline for the Assessment of Efficacy of Clinical Hypnosis Applications developed by the Task Force which makes ten specific recommendations. The guideline is intended to be a tool for those who want to assess the quality of existing evidence on the efficacy of clinical hypnosis for any particular indication. The paper also discusses methodological issues in the interpretation and implementation of these guidelines. Future papers will report on the other products of the Hypnosis Efficacy Task Force, such as best practice recommendations for outcomes research in hypnosis...

The book summarizes selected applications of clinical hypnosis for medical treatment. It is not a training manual, since professional hypnosis training is offered by the recognized national and international hypnosis organizations listed in APPENDIX 2. Hypnosis, properly understood, is not a treatment in itself, but rather a powerful reinforcement to a wide range of health care interventions. The two volume publishing project is designed to achieve recognition and acceptance of clinical hypnosis by major international health organisations. At the basic level, hypnosis interventions can be used safely by trained primary health care workers, nurses and doctors. To that end, this Volume 2 contains thirteen chapters on the clinical applications of hypnosis. It serves to remind clinicians, who have some knowledge of hypnosis, how to use general processes and specific techniques to augment their primary medical training. The appendices include: a brief glossary of hypnosis, contact with international and national hypnosis societies, an outline of the Olness-Team hypnosis training program for developing countries, some quiz to reinforce the learning, and finally email contacts for the contributors for further study. Volume 1 in the series covers selected Evidence Based Medicine (EMB) applications, with eleven chapters on: hypnosis concepts, testing, acute pain, chronic pain, childhood, PTSD, surgery, childbirth, sleeping, depression, stress & anxiety. Clinical hypnosis has been legally accepted by almost every medical authority worldwide. With hypnosis, each patient is encouraged to become an active part of his or her health care, team. Thus hypnosis could become recognized as highly cost-effective for both preventive and curative health care. Volume Two is an introduction, not designed to be a stand-alone training manual for beginners. A recent comprehensive textbook of hypnosis is available (Barabasz, A. & Watkins, J. G. (2005) Hypnotherapeutic Techniques, 2E. New York and London: Brunner/Routledge-Taylor and Francis (ISBN 0-415-93581-4). The key objective of this project is to begin to make hypnosis concepts available (by book or free download) and thus to motivate basic clinical hypnosis training for every doctor, nurse, medical and nursing student, internationally in both developed and developing countries. The project was inspired by the encouragement and support of Professor William C. Wester II of Cincinnati, Ohio.

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 2019

Impairment of Hypnosis by Nocebo Response and Related Neurovegetative Changes: A Case Report in Oral Surgery, 2024

This article presents the third molar removal in a highly hypnotizable patient, who had been successfully submitted to oral surgery with hypnosis as stand-alone anesthesia in previous sessions. Unexpectedly, hypnosis initially failed, as a result of a nocebo response due to a previous dentist's bad communication; two complaints made by the patient were associated with increased sympathetic activity (as defined by increased heart rate and electrodermal activity and decreased heart rate variability). After deepening of hypnosis, the patient achieved a full hypnotic analgesia allowing for a successful conclusion of the intervention, an event associated with decreased heart rate, electrodermal activity, and increased heart rate variability. Hence, the initial failure was paralleled by a decreased parasympathetic activity and increased sympathetic activity, while hypnotic analgesia was associated with the opposite pattern. The patient's postoperative report indicated that the initial failure of hypnosis depended on a strong nocebo effect because of a previous dentist distrusting hypnosis and persuading her that it was not enough to face a third molar removal.

Annals of The New York Academy of Sciences, 1977

The seemingly inexhaustible techniques of inducing hypnosis implies that the induction of hypnosis has nothing to do with the induction procedure per se, and that the gradual development of an alleged state of hypnosis is an illusion, an artifact of the induction procedure. This illusion is reinforced by the progression of item difficulty on standard susceptibility scales, and by the impression of increasing relaxation in the physical and facial appearance of subjects undergoing an induction. I will present evidence supporting the notion that the obtained enhancement of suggestibility is immediate. If this is indeed the case, then its enhancement must be obscured by the administration of the standard susceptibility scales. Another implication is that the trait theory underlying these scales is inappropriate; to wit, giving heterogeneous items equal weight when they do not all represent the same underlying system or function. Quite aside from this conceptual issue, these scales suffer from severe shortcomings with respect to item difficulty, which can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the nature of suggestibility or hypnosis. An alternative approach to the problem of measurement will be considered after I present some of the conceptual issues surrounding suggestibility and hypnosis.

Pain Medicine, 2017

2023

There is an abundance of outcomes research for clinical hypnosis showing promising results, however, hypnosis is still underutilized in clinical care. For a behavioral intervention to enter mainstream clinical care, efficacy needs to be demonstrated with exceptionally high quality of evidence. Furthermore, the reporting of these studies also needs to be complete and sufficiently clear to show quality of evidence, and to enable replication and clinical use. The Task Force for Establishing Efficacy Standards for Clinical Hypnosis conducted a review of best practice guidelines in outcomes research, including a review of the CONSORT statement, TIDieR checklist, and the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. The present article provides best practice guidelines specific to conducting clinical hypnosis research. The guidelines comprise recommendations for planning, conducting, and reporting research in this field. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CLINICAL HYPNOSIS RESEARCH 3 The recommendations are presented in two tiers. Tier I recommendations include essential best practices, such as a call for the use of detailed research and intervention manuals, plans for and reporting of participant-education about hypnosis, the use of hypnotizability scales with good psychometric properties, and clear reporting of the hypnotizability measurement. They also instruct for sharing of intervention scripts and manuals, and the clear reporting of the induction procedure, the labeling of the intervention for participants, and the definition of hypnosis used. Tier II includes preferred recommendations, calling for measurement of adherence to home practice, measurement of hypnotizability by someone other than the interventionist, the use of hypnotizability scales with both subjective and behavioral measures of responsiveness, and the involvement pf participants from the full hypnotizability spectrum. They also recommend the assessment of response expectancy, therapeutic relationship, and other variables related to proposed mechanisms of action, and the reporting of participants prior hypnosis experiences, and the relationship of expectancies and treatment outcomes. This list of recommendations will be useful for researchers, reviewers, and journal editors alike when conducting, reporting, or evaluating studies involving clinical applications of hypnosis.