Information on hypnotherapy and clinical reports

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therapy

literature

indication

Hyp­no­ther­apy is ap­pro­pri­ate for the en­tire range of psy­cho­lo­gical dis­orders such as­

  • Anxi­ety 56)
  • De­pres­sion 57)
  • Ob­sess­ive com­puls­ive dis­orders 58)
  • Ad­dic­tion etc. 59) 60).

And this also is true for psycho­so­matic dis­orders. For a large num­ber of those dis­orders (re­lated to the car­di­o-vas­cu­lar sys­tem, the im­mune sys­tem etc.) evid­ence is avail­able (con­trolled stud­ies, case re­ports) for the ef­fic­acy of hyp­nosis in treat­ing these dis­orders. The table be­neath gives (only a re­stric­ted) se­lec­tion of dis­orders for which hyp­nosis is a valu­able thera­peutic tool:

The in­flu­ence of hyp­nosis on the course of der­ma­to­lo­gical ill­nesses gives rise to the as­sump­tion that also im­mun­o­lo­gical pro­cesses can be in­flu­enced by hyp­nosis. This has been demon­strated by con­trolled stud­ies that re­port an in­flu­ence of hyp­nosis on im­me­di­ate type of al­ler­gic re­ac­tions (Z­achariae & Bjer­ring, 1990 70) as well as on the delayed type (Z­achari­ae, Bjer­ring & Aren­dt-Nielsen, 1989 71).

In de­scrib­ing thera­peutic pos­sib­il­it­ies for the use of hyp­nosis it should not be for­got­ten that hyp­nosis is also valu­able out­side the psy­cho­thera­peutic field, i.e. as an ad­junct to med­ical pro­ced­ures. Thus, hyp­notic an­al­gesia is used for pain­ful dia­gnostic op­er­a­tions, e.g. in gyneco­logy 81) or in plastic sur­gery 80). Hyp­nosis is also being used in on­co­logy 79) in order to stop nausea caused by chemo­ther­apy and to con­trol pain and anxi­ety.

­For treat­ment of psychotic dis­orders, hyp­no­ther­apy is con­sidered as con­train­dic­ated (Stocks­mei­er, 1984 74) al­though La­voie et al. (1978 75)) re­port the use of hyp­nosis in more than 200 schizo­phrenic pa­tients that had not led to any neg­at­ive ef­fects. In this case, however, only hyp­notic tests of one hour each had been con­duc­ted and not longer hyp­no­ther­apies. But a num­ber of case re­ports are avail­able on the suc­cess­ful work with hyp­nosis in psychot­ics 76), 77). Stud­ies as­sess­ing the ef­fic­acy of hyp­no­thera­peutic in­ter­ven­tions with psychot­ics, however, are miss­ing totally.

Hyp­not­ic­ally treated dis­order­s

n­ervous sys­tem, mus­cu­lar sys­tem, joint­s:

  • ten­sion head­ache 61)
  • arth­ritis 78)

respiratory or­gans:

  • bron­chial asthma 62)

cardio-vascular dis­eases:

  • high blood pres­sure 63)

vascular dis­eases:

  • Raynauds dis­ease 64)

skin dis­eases:

  • neurodermatit­is, psori­asis 65)

gastrointestinal dis­eases:

  • “Reiz­darm” 66)
  • duo­denal ul­cers 67)

diseases of the sens­ory or­gans:

  • tin­nitus 68)
  • ver­tigo 69)

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