What Hypno-CBT® helps with?
Hypno-CBT® Applications
Evidence & applications
Imagine you’re lying in a hospital bed, minutes from being wheeled into the operating room for a long-awaited procedure. All around you, machines are beeping and whirring, echoing your frenzied nerves.
Moments later, a nurse enters your room. She informs you that you’ll be receiving a much lower dose of anaesthesia than previous patients. To supplement this, you’ll be given a brief, 15-minute hypnosis session to help ease your pain.
You might be surprised to learn that in one randomised study, brief hypnotic preparation was sufficient to produce a statistically significant reduction in the use of anaesthetic drugs during surgery. Patients in the intervention group experienced less pain, nausea, fatigue, discomfort and emotional upset than those in the control group. As this was in America, these patients even saved around $700 each, mainly because they spent less time in the operating room. The 2007 study appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute – one of many studies on how hypnosis can be applied practically in medicine.
1955
British Medical Association recognises hypnosis as an effective treatment
1958
American Medical Association follows suit
1959
Thousands of clinical studies published since 1958 on its applications
Hypnosis has a long, well-documented evidence base
Since hypnosis was first recognised as an effective treatment by the British Medical Association (BMA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) in the 1950s, thousands of clinical studies have explored how it can be used. The range of conditions it’s been studied for is broad.
Hypnosis is one of the three elements integrated into Hypno-CBT® – alongside CBT and mindfulness (see What is Hypno-CBT?). Because of this, the evidence below on what hypnosis itself can do is directly relevant to understanding what Hypno-CBT® draws on, even in cases where a study tested hypnosis alone rather than the full integrated model.
Pain
One key use of hypnosis is to help patients manage pain. In 1999, the British Medical Journal published “ABC of complementary medicine: Hypnosis and Relaxation Therapies.” This paper reported hypnosis as an effective treatment for acute and chronic pain, as well as pain associated with the treatment of cancer.
The researchers also found evidence supporting hypnosis as a helpful treatment for symptoms associated with conditions such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and asthma.
British Medical Journal, 1999
Anxiety around medical and dental treatment
Hypnosis is also widely used to help people who find medical or dental treatment particularly stressful. University College London, for example, runs training for dentists, hygienists, therapists and nurses in using hypnosis principles to help patients manage anxiety, phobic responses to treatment, and fear around pain – a sign of how mainstream this application has become in clinical settings.
Psychosomatic conditions
Research also supports hypnosis as a helpful part of treatment for a number of psychosomatic conditions. As the Centre for Treatment of Anxiety and Mood Disorders defines it, these are physical diseases “thought to be caused, or made worse, by mental factors,” including stress and anxiety. These often distressing conditions are not “all in the mind.”
Tension headaches and migranes
Asthma
Gastrointestinal complaints & IBS
Eczema & hives
Warts
NHS recognition
The NHS follows NICE guidance recommending that referral for psychological interventions, including hypnotherapy, be considered for people with IBS that hasn’t responded to other treatment.
Why does it help with physical symptoms?
Hypnosis works, in part, by helping people break unhelpful thought patterns and calm themselves during periods of stress – and this has a measurable physical effect, not just a psychological one. In fact, mind and body are not separate systems: thoughts are physiological events in the body. That’s part of why hypnosis sits so usefully at the point where psychology and physical health meet – and why, within Hypno-CBT®, it’s used to support the same cognitive and behavioural changes that CBT aims for.
The research continues
This is an active, ongoing area of study, with new randomised studies published each year.
Stanford University’s Center on Stress and Health, led by hypnosis researcher Dr David Spiegel, is one of several institutions currently exploring how hypnosis might be used – for example, to treat insomnia in breast cancer patients, or to help calm children ahead of invasive medical procedures.e medical procedures.
Explore further
This page covers where the evidence for hypnosis is strongest. For a closer look at the neuroscience behind it, and how Hypno-CBT® applies this evidence specifically, see Neuroscience and research. If you’d like to talk through whether Hypno-CBT® could help with what you’re experiencing, a registered practitioner can discuss your options with you.
Deep dive
Neuroscience and research
How Hypno-CBT® applies the evidence specifically.
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Discuss your options with a registered Hypno-CBT® practitioner.