Code of Ethics for Certified Hypnotherapists

1. Informed Consent for Therapy

1.1. When obtaining informed consent for therapy, hypnotherapists shall inform clients at the earliest feasible stage of the therapeutic relationship about the nature and expected course of therapy, fees, involvement of third parties, and limits of confidentiality. Ample opportunity shall be provided for clients to ask questions and receive answers.

1.2. When obtaining informed consent for treatments where established techniques and procedures are not widely recognized, hypnotherapists shall inform their clients about the developing nature of the treatment, potential risks involved, alternative treatment options that may be available, and the voluntary nature of their participation in the treatment. The primary consideration of hypnotherapists shall be the physical and mental well-being of each client. Hypnotherapists shall refrain from engaging in verbal, physical, or sexual abuse towards any client and shall not discriminate against clients based on race, religion, sexual orientation, age or gender identity.

1.3. Hypnotherapists shall strictly adhere to the boundaries of their training and expertise in the practice of hypnotism, ensuring compliance with all applicable local laws. Hypnotherapists shall not diagnose, treat, or prescribe for clients in matters pertaining to medical or mental health conditions. Their aim shall be to facilitate clients’ natural restorative and coping abilities, and refraining from making any therapeutic claims. Hypnotherapists shall abstain from providing hypnotic services to clients who exhibit behavior, appearance, or statements that warrant evaluation by a licensed healthcare professional. Services may only be rendered to such clients following evaluation and approval from the licensed healthcare professional.

2. Therapy Involving Couples or Families

2.1. When agreeing to provide services to multiple individuals with a relationship (such as spouses, significant others, or parents and children), hypnotherapists shall take reasonable steps to clarify, at the outset, (1) who among the individuals are clients and (2) the nature of the hypnotherapist’s relationship with each person. This clarification shall include the hypnotherapist’s role and the likely uses of the services provided or the information obtained.

2.2. If it becomes apparent that hypnotherapists may be required to assume potentially conflicting roles (such as serving as a witness for one party in divorce proceedings), they shall take reasonable steps to clarify, modify, or withdraw from such roles as appropriate.

3. Group Therapy

When providing services to multiple individuals in a group setting, hypnotherapists shall clearly describe, at the outset, the roles and responsibilities of all parties involved, as well as the limits of confidentiality.

4. Providing Therapy to Those Already Receiving Mental Health Services

When considering whether to offer or provide services to individuals already receiving mental health services elsewhere, hypnotherapists shall carefully assess treatment issues and the potential client’s welfare. These issues shall be discussed with the client or another legally authorized person on their behalf, in order to minimize the risk of confusion and conflict. Hypnotherapists shall consult with other service providers when appropriate and proceed with caution and sensitivity to the therapeutic concerns.

5. Sexual Intimacies with Current Therapy Clients/Patients

Hypnotherapists shall refrain from engaging in sexual intimacies with current therapy clients.

6. Sexual Intimacies with Relatives or Significant Others of Current Therapy Clients/Patients

Hypnotherapists shall avoid engaging in sexual intimacies with individuals they know to be close relatives, guardians, or significant others of current clients. Hypnotherapists shall not terminate therapy to circumvent this standard.

7. Therapy with Former Sexual Partners

Hypnotherapists shall not accept individuals with whom they have engaged in sexual intimacies as therapy clients.

8. Sexual Intimacies with Former Therapy Clients

8.1. Hypnotherapists shall refrain from engaging in sexual intimacies with former clients for a minimum of two years after the cessation or termination of therapy.

8.2. Hypnotherapists shall not engage in sexual intimacies with former clients/patients even after a two-year interval, except in highly exceptional circumstances. If such activity occurs after the two-year period has elapsed and there has been no sexual contact with the former client/patient, hypnotherapists bear the burden of demonstrating that no exploitation has taken place. This assessment shall take into account all relevant factors, including (1) the duration of time since therapy ended, (2) the nature, duration, and intensity of the therapy, (3) the circumstances of termination, (4) the client’s personal history, (5) the client’s current mental status, (6) the potential adverse impact on the client, and (7) any statements or actions made by the therapist during therapy that may suggest or invite the possibility of a post-termination sexual or romantic relationship with the client.

9. Interruption of Therapy

When entering into employment or contractual relationships, hypnotherapists shall make reasonable efforts to provide an orderly and appropriate resolution for the continuity of client care in the event that the employment or contractual relationship ends. The welfare of the client shall be of paramount consideration.

10. Premature Termination of Therapy

10.1. Hypnotherapists shall terminate therapy when it becomes reasonably evident that the client no longer requires the service, is unlikely to benefit from it, or is being harmed by its continuation.

10.2. Hypnotherapists may terminate therapy when they are threatened or otherwise endangered by the client or by another person with whom the client has a relationship.

10.3. Unless precluded by the actions of clients or third-party payors, hypnotherapists shall provide pre-termination counseling or coaching, and suggest suitable alternative service providers prior to terminating the therapy.

11. Advertising

Hypnotherapists shall maintain honesty and truthfulness in all forms of advertising. They shall consistently provide accurate information regarding their titles and degrees when communicating with the general public, media, and within the scope of their profession.

We are migrating from our old website.  Welcome to the new AIM news and posts page!

Eric

Palo Alto Online
24-02-2013
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Hypnotherapy explored as weight-loss alternative

When the Weight Watchers diet didn’t work for Ellyn Corey, she decided to try hypnotherapy to lose weight.

She was a bit skeptical at first. But “I began to see results right away,” she said, adding that, after the first few sessions, she got “hooked.”

Hypnotherapy not only helped her to give up Beard Papa’s chocolate éclairs, but it also gave her an “overall positive body image and mental outlook,” she said.

In a country where more than one-third of adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control, Corey is among a growing number of people exploring hypnotherapy as an alternative to conventional weight-loss methods.

Her instructor, Eric Rosen, was educated at the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy and currently offers classes through the City of Palo Alto Recreation Department, as well as the cities of Los Altos, Menlo Park, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and Saratoga.

In his classes and private sessions, Rosen uses hypnosis to suggest to his students and clients that they make smart food choices, avoid binge-eating and be attentive during meals by jotting down their food consumption before and after. He gently encourages them to choose organic foods over processed ones, embrace “super foods” such as broccoli, spinach and soy, and use “detox” foods to supplement their exercise regimes.

His classes, he said, focus on helping people to visualize their goals and change their food habits.

Hypnosis, by itself, might not be a “magic bullet” to solve the complex problem of losing weight. As a supplement to a comprehensive weight-loss program, however, it can help people lose “significantly more weight,” according to a study by Dr. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine.

Weight loss is only one of many health problems that hypnotherapists are trying to tackle; others include controlling anxiety before and during medical procedures, headaches, smoking, pain, hot flashes in breast cancer survivors and irritable bowel syndrome, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Derived from the Greek word “hypnos” meaning sleep, hypnosis guides people into a psychological state in which a person’s awareness and concentration are heightened.

“It is something like looking through a telephoto lens in a camera,” Spiegel said in an interview with the Weekly.

Hypnotists use this “hyper-attentive” state to get people to focus on a particular thought or memory, tap into their pain and anxiety, and work towards resolving them.

Many experts regard hypnosis as a deeper form of daydreaming — a far cry from the image of magical mind-control created by Las Vegas stage-show performers.

When people “lose themselves” in a book or a movie, or lose track of time while driving, they are essentially putting themselves in a hypnosis-like trance. Self-hypnosis can be a powerful tool to help the mind identify and solve its problems, practitioners say, and most hypnotherapists teach self-hypnosis to their patients during or after the first few sessions.

The practice of hypnosis dates back to Ancient Egyptian “sleep temples,” more than 4000 years ago.

Many websites describe how hypnosis moved initially from the realm of the irrational to that of the scientifically acceptable in the 19th century. Two surgeons’ work aided in the acceptance. One used hypnosis to anesthetize patients during surgery, and the other tried to establish a scientific explanation for the phenomenon.

In 1958 the American Medical Association approved and encouraged research on the medical uses of hypnosis, and two years later, the American Psychological Association endorsed hypnosis as a branch of psychology.

Despite its history, scientists are still trying to figure out how exactly hypnosis influences the brain.

Most popular theories suggest that it works by “switching off” the rational, decision-making part of the brain that focuses on day-to-day activities, in order to unlock the more creative, unrestrained part.

This idea has received some support from EEG studies of hypnotized subjects showing higher brain-wave activity typically associated with sleep and dreaming. Other studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s had proposed that hypnosis is mediated by the right hemisphere — the part of the brain that may control imagination and impulse — perhaps explaining why people under hypnosis are more likely to act on foolish suggestions by stage-show hypnotists. These and other hypnosis-related studies were reviewed in a 2012 article by Professor John Kihlstrom, from the University of California, Berkeley, in the journal Cortex.

“We do know, for sure, that people in the trance state can alter their perceptions; sensory regions in the brain will literally turn down their response to pain input and change their perception of color, smell or hearing,” Spiegel explained. He added that hypnosis also appears to have an effect on the part of the brain that helps us process attention.

Some people are more easily hypnotized than others.

Children and adults who are “easily absorbed into activities such as reading, listening to music or daydreaming” are thought to be more easily hypnotized, a University of Tennessee psychology professor wrote in a 2001 Scientific American article.

Though the inner workings of hypnosis are still obscure, there are some established techniques that hypnotherapists employ to guide their patients into a hypnotic trance, few of which involve a swinging pocket watch or exotic crystals.

Most use progressive relaxation and guided imagery, which involve breathing techniques and invoking positive and calming images to help people enter the hypnotic trance.

Mary Horngren, another hypnotherapist educated at the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy, uses this technique to help cancer patients at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and Breast Cancer Connections prepare for surgery and cope with their pain and anxiety.

During her sessions, she guides them through a sort of “dry-run” of the surgery or treatment, focusing on positive thoughts so that they are well-prepared when the time comes.

At the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine, Spiegel uses hypnosis to help patients manage their pain. Hypnosis can reduce pain by half on the same amount of medication, he said.

Under hypnosis, patients learn to draw out their pain — essentially “bringing it on,” Spiegel said — and then learn to “control and separate their psychological response from their physical response.”

He said that he has also been able to help people quit smoking using hypnosis, with one out of four patients ending up not touching a cigarette after just one session of hypnosis.

Spiegel also used hypnosis on Palo Alto resident Kenneth Fitzhugh, who was charged in his wife’s murder and put on trial in 2000. Fitzhugh testified that the 50-minute hypnosis session unlocked repressed memories explaining his connection to pieces of physical evidence in his vehicle. Fitzhugh was later convicted of the crime.

However, the application of hypnosis to forensics is still controversial and highly debated.

Despite its use in medical settings, hypnosis still faces skepticism and is often dismissed as a “pseudoscience,” which is why hypnotherapists like Horngren strive to raise the level of respect for the practice.

“It is their fear of losing control,” she said, explaining why people still have misconceptions about the practice.

“Hypnosis is one of the safest procedures and has far fewer side effects that any other medication or procedure,” Spiegel said. Bad experiences with unreliable or untrustworthy hypnotherapists could fuel this skepticism, he added, but the techniques themselves are well-established.

Currently, no specific agency or board licenses and regulates the practice of hypnotherapy, although there are schools such as the Palo Alto School of Hypnotherapy — recognized by the Bureau of Private Postsecondary Education in California — that offer courses and certification in medical and clinical hypnotherapy.

Doctors and psychiatrists belonging to professional organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association and the American Medical Association have strict standards and guidelines for the professional practice of hypnotherapy.

“It is extremely important to establish a rapport between the hypnotist and the patient/client … to remain above the board with them,” Rosen said.

Diana O’Hagin, who used hypnosis decades ago to give up smoking, said Rosen recorded all of their sessions for her reference and to keep her appraised of her progress.

Some people still question whether hypnosis can make a person do something they don’t want to, but practitioners dispute that belief. While “one’s critical judgment is suspended,” as Spiegel described it, hypnotherapists can only show someone how to achieve what they want, according to Rosen.

Horngren echoed this sentiment.

“It is all about helping people help themselves,” she said, adding that she only acts as a facilitator, guiding them through the healing process.

Empowering Parents to Address Children’s Psychological Concerns
Based on Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development, children of different ages have specific developmental tasks and growth characteristics. Paediatric hypnotherapy not only addresses immediate issues faced by children but also considers their long-term developmental needs. This approach aligns with parental guidance methods to ensure the comprehensive psychological growth of children.

Child Emotions

1. Fundamentals of Paediatric Hypnotherapy
2. Family of Origin and Parenting Styles
3. Children’s Behavior and the Subconscious
4. Brain Development and Hypnotherapy
5. Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development
6. Children’s Sleep and Hypnosis
7. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
8. Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD)
9. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)
10. Pediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching
11. Positive Parenting for Children and Adolescents
12. Satir Parenting Techniques
13. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Role Tree
14. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Jointed Doll Models and Emotion Dolls
15. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Story Cubes
16. Paediatric Hypnotherapy Coaching Tools – Seed Paper and Handprint Paper
17. Workshop Processes for Parents and Schools

Paediatric Hypnotherapy Techniques

1. Communication Tips with Parents and Home Support Strategies
2. Code of Conduct for Pediatric Hypnotherapists
3. Suggestions in a Waking State
4. Metaphorical Stories
5. Trust Building and Addressing Hypnosis Fears
6. Focus, Imagination Exercises, and Body Scanning
7. Special Sleep Induction Methods
8. Rocking Induction Method
9. Candy House Induction Method
10. Lights Out Induction Method
11. Puppet Induction Method
12. Weight Induction Method
13. Number Catching Induction Method
14. Actor Induction Method
15. Worry Tree and Managing Negative Emotions
16. Inner Ally and Positive Resources
17. Hero Friends and Overcoming Fears
18. Security and Puppet Communication
19. Happiness and Gratitude for What You Have
20. Attachment Theory and Managing Separation Anxiety
21. TV Rewind and Handling Negative Experiences
22. Future Time Machine and Growth Mindset
23. Brain Calculator and Cognitive Behavior
24. Visualization and Pain Reduction

Applications of Pediatric Hypnotherapy

• Behavior

1. Emotional Fluctuations
2. Separation Anxiety
3. Respect and Courtesy
4. Tardiness and Procrastination
5. Lying
6. Cheating and Stealing

• Habits

1. Bedwetting
2. Sleep Habits
3. Psychogenic Stuttering
4. Hair Twirling, Nail Biting, and Thumb Sucking
5. Preventing Drug Initiation

• Performance

1. Stress and Tension
2. Academic Performance

• Self-Image

1. Adolescent Breakup Distress
2. Bullying, Verbal, and Emotional Abuse
3. Parental Divorce
4. Social Skills
5. Excessive Attention to Appearance and Ugly Duckling Syndrome

Stanford Medicine
3-10-2012
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Not getting sleepy? Research explains why hypnosis doesn’t work for all

Not everyone is able to be hypnotized, and new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine shows how the brains of such people differ from those who can easily be.

The study, published in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, uses data from functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging to identify how the areas of the brain associated with executive control and attention tend to have less activity in people who cannot be put into a hypnotic trance.

“There’s never been a brain signature of being hypnotized, and we’re on the verge of identifying one,” said David Spiegel, MD, the paper’s senior author and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Such an advance would enable scientists to understand better the mechanisms underlying hypnosis and how it can be used more widely and effectively in clinical settings, added Spiegel, who also directs the Stanford Center for Integrative Medicine.

Spiegel estimates that one-quarter of the patients he sees cannot be hypnotized, though a person’s hypnotizability is not linked with any specific personality trait. “There’s got to be something going on in the brain,” he said.

Hypnosis is described as a trance-like state during which a person has a heightened focus and concentration. It has been shown to help with brain control over sensation and behavior, and has been used clinically to help patients manage pain, control stress and anxiety and combat phobias.

Hypnosis works by modulating activity in brain regions associated with focused attention, and this study offers compelling new details regarding neural capacity for hypnosis.

“Our results provide novel evidence that altered functional connectivity in [the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex] and [the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex] may underlie hypnotizability,” the researchers wrote in their paper.

For the study, Spiegel and his Stanford colleagues performed functional and structural MRI scans of the brains of 12 adults with high hypnotizability and 12 adults with low hypnotizability.

The researchers looked at the activity of three different networks in the brain: the default-mode network, used when one’s brain is idle; the executive-control network, which is involved in making decisions; and the salience network, which is involved in deciding something is more important than something else.

The findings, Spiegel said, were clear: Both groups had an active default-mode network, but highly hypnotizable participants showed greater co-activation between components of the executive-control network and the salience network. More specifically, in the brains of the highly hypnotizable group the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an executive-control region of the brain, appeared to be activated in tandem with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, which is part of the salience network and plays a role in focusing of attention. By contrast, there was little functional connectivity between these two areas of the brain in those with low hypnotizability.

Spiegel said he was pleased that he and his team found something so clear. “The brain is complicated, people are complicated, and it was surprising we were able to get such a clear signature,” he explained.

Spiegel also said the work confirms that hypnotizability is less about personality variables and more about cognitive style. “Here we’re seeing a neural trait,” he said.

The authors’ next step is to further explore how these functional networks change during hypnosis. Spiegel and his team have recruited high- and low-hypnotizable patients for another study during which fMRI assessment will be done during hypnotic states. Funding for that work is being provided by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

Funding for this study came from the Nissan Research Center, the Randolph H. Chase, MD Fund II, the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The study’s first-author is Fumiko Hoeft, MD, PhD, who was formerly an instructor at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research and is now an associate professor of psychiatry at UCSF. Other co-authors are John Gabrieli, PhD, a professor at MIT (then a professor of psychology at Stanford); Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, a research scientist at MIT (then a science and engineering associate at Stanford); Brian Haas, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Georgia (then a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research at Stanford); Roland Bammer, PhD, associate professor of radiology; and Vinod Menon, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

The Guardian
22-7-2012
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Vaughan Bell: hypnosis is no laughing matter

Long derided as a tool of quacks and comedians, the science of suggestibility is enjoying a revival as a clinical tool

Hypnosis is the eccentric uncle of cognitive science. It was once part of the mainstream – studied by scientists and clinicians alike in its 1960s heyday – but it slowly fell into disrepute as it was picked up and popularised by tacky stage hypnotists and quack practitioners in the following decades.

In recent years, hypnosis has seen something of a rebirth, and neuroscience studies using the technique are now regularly published in some of the most respected scientific journals. Curiously, though, it hasn’t shaken off the stigma entirely. While writing this article I contacted several researchers who have published neuroscience studies using hypnosis, and not one replied. The reticence is understandable. Like the study of consciousness 20 years ago, hypnosis is still considered by some to be a “career-limiting move”. Consequently, scientists make sure they stick to the most conservative and orthodox form of research – academic journals, occasional conference presentations, and definitely nothing that hints of hype, or indeed, public exposure.

The lack of wider discussion is a pity, as hypnosis – or rather suggestibility – is a remarkable aspect of human psychology. The ability to be hypnotised seems to be a distinct trait that is distributed among the population, like height or shoe size, in a “bell curve” or normal distribution: a minority of people cannot engage with any suggestions, a minority can engage with almost all, and most people can achieve a few.

The key word here is “engage”, as, contrary to popular belief, hypnosis cannot be used to make people do something against their will, even though the effects seem to happen involuntarily. If this seems paradoxical, a good analogy is watching a movie: you don’t decide to react emotionally to the on-screen story, but you can choose to turn away or disengage at any time. In other words, the effects of the film, just like hypnosis, require your active participation.

The most difficult suggestions to achieve are those which affect the fundamentals of the mind, such as memory and perception, meaning that while highly hypnotisable people can experience temporary hallucinations and amnesia after suitable suggestions, low-hypnotisable people may only be able to experience temporary changes in their volition or movements – such as an arm feeling heavier than usual, perhaps.

It seems, however, that there is very little that can be done to make you more or less hypnotisable – the hypnotisability trait is the primary factor in how successfully you can experience the effects. We know that there is a genetic component to this trait and that several studies have indicated that highly hypnotisable people show structural and functional differences in the brain when compared to low-hypnotisables, but the question of why we have a varying ability to have our reality changed by suggestions remains a mystery.

Due to their ability to have their mental processes temporarily altered in ways previously not thought possible, highly hypnotisable people have become key in scientific studies. Amir Raz and colleagues at McGill University in Montreal reported that it was possible to “switch off” automatic word reading and abolish the Stroop effect – a psychological phenomenon that demonstrates a conflict between meanings, such as where we are much slower to identify the ink colour of a word when the word itself describes a different hue. Furthermore, when this experiment was run in a brain scanner, participants showed much lower activation in both the anterior cingulate cortex, an area known to be particularly involved in resolving conflict between competing demands, and the visual cortex, which is crucial for recognising words. Although this may seem like a technicality, to the scientific world it was a strikingly persuasive demonstration that hypnosis could apparently disassemble an automatic and well-established psychological effect in a manner consistent with the brain processes that support it.

Neuroimaging has also proved key in answering the question of whether hypnotised people are pretending to experience the effects. When people are asked to fake hypnosis, to the point where observers cannot tell the difference between them and the genuinely hypnotised people, the two groups are clearly distinguishable by their brain activity.

Taking the science one step further, researchers from the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science in Sydney have published a series of studies in which they have used hypnosis to temporarily simulate genuine conditions where patients may hold false beliefs or lose awareness of a problem after brain injury. One such condition, called somatoparaphrenia, can occur after right-sided brain injury and can result in the patient denying ownership of a limb. Literally, the patient believes that their arm is not theirs, has been replaced, or belongs to someone else – something which both challenges our intuitive ideas about how we perceive our body and can pose a practical problem for post-injury rehabilitation. In highly hypnotisable volunteers, the Macquarie team momentarily instilled a similar feeling of limb alienation to examine whether healthy people could rationalise such a counterintuitive idea, finding that participants remained consistent in their explanations even when challenged with visual evidence.

A special issue of the respected journal Cortex will shortly be dedicated to the neuropsychology of hypnosis, additionally pointing to the growing momentum of the scientific revival. The wider public, however, still base their knowledge on the watches and weight-loss stereotype, meaning it is likely to be a while before neuroscientists feel comfortable about breaking their self-imposed silence.

NPR
30-06-2011
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Report Details How One Principal Hypnotized Students For Years

A school district in Florida just released a 130 page report that details how one high school principal hypnotized between 70 and 75 students since 2006.

The school district began investigating Dr. George Kenney, the former principal at North Port High School in Sarasota, after he admitted that he had hypnotized Wesley McKinley, 16, a day before he killed himself in April.

According to ABC News, investigators say Kenney now admits that he had hypnotized two other students who died within a month of McKinley.

ABC News reports:

[Kenney] had denied using the technique on Brittany Palumbo, 16, who killed herself May 4, or Marcus Freeman, 16, a star quarterback on the high school team, who died in a car crash March 15.

“Dr. Kenney admitted that he lied … and he admitted that he did have sessions with both of the other deceased students,” according to the report by Steele Investigations Agency, released this week.

In his interview with the investigators, Kenney, a popular principal at the school since 2001, said he felt terrible about “putting his school and his students through something that they didn’t need or deserve to have to endure on top of all the tragedy they already have experienced” and started to cry, the report says.

Tampa Bay’s Fox 13 reports that Kenney’s hypnosis sessions were well known and widespread. Kenney would hypnotize students to help with their test scores and athletic performance. Fox 13 reports that Kenney always sought parental consent. In 2009, the report says his supervisor told him he could only perform hypnosis in a psychology class, but Kenney continued doing it because he said he was never told to stop.

Fox 13 says no one is linking the hypnosis with the deaths of the students, but The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that the school district put Kenney on leave in May pending an investigation into whether he broke the law when he hypnotized students.

The Herald Tribune reports that “therapeutic” hypnosis is against the law the in Florida, unless it is monitored or conducted by a medical professional. But it’s unlikely that Kenney will face prosecution, because the law is vague and “rarely used” since it was enacted in 1961.

The Herald Tribune reports:

Bradenton lawyer Mark Lipinski said the statute lacks the crucial definition of “therapeutic,” leaving investigators with only its broad dictionary definition.

“The law is obscure, vague and unenforceable,” he said. “I honestly just don’t see a crime and any case would be a stretch, in my opinion.”

BBC
06-06-2011
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NHS should offer hypnosis as standard says new report

Hypnosis should become a standard technique on the NHS to treat a range of conditions according to a new report.

The hypnosis and psychosomatic medicine section of the Royal Society of Medicine says the technique can be used to relieve pain and treat stress related conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome.

Graham Satchell reports.

American Psychological Association
01-2011
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Hypnosis continues to show promise in reducing pain and soothing anxiety, although the research is still inconclusive about its success in smoking cessation.

The first task for many psychologists who use hypnosis is telling patients what hypnosis is and what it isn’t.

“If you watch hypnosis on TV, the subject always ends up clucking like a chicken, being naked or assassinating a president,” says Eric Willmarth, PhD, founder of Michigan Behavioral Consultants and past president of APA Div. 30 (Society of Psychological Hypnosis).

Even though stage hypnotists and TV shows have damaged the public image of hypnosis, a growing body of scientific research supports its benefits in treating a wide range of conditions, including pain, depression, anxiety and phobias.

“Hypnosis works and the empirical support is unequivocal in that regard. It really does help people,” says Michael Yapko, PhD, a psychologist and fellow of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. “But hypnosis isn’t a therapy in and of itself. Most people wouldn’t regard it that way.”

Hypnosis can create a highly relaxed state of inner concentration and focused attention for patients, and the technique can be tailored to different treatment methods, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. Patients also can become more empowered by learning to hypnotize themselves at home to reduce chronic pain, improve sleep, or alleviate some symptoms of depression or anxiety.

Hypnosis has been used for centuries for pain control, including during the Civil War when Army surgeons hypnotized injured soldiers before amputations. Recent studies have confirmed its effectiveness as a tool to reduce pain. Among the leading researchers in the field is Guy H. Montgomery, PhD, a psychologist who has conducted extensive research on hypnosis and pain management at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, where he is director of the Integrative Behavioral Medicine Program.

In one study, Montgomery and colleagues tested the effectiveness of a 15-minute pre-surgery hypnosis session versus an empathic listening session in a clinical trial with 200 breast cancer patients. In a 2007 article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (Vol. 99, No. 17), the team reported that patients who received hypnosis reported less post-surgical pain, nausea, fatigue and discomfort. The study also found that the hospital saved $772 per patient in the hypnosis group, mainly due to reduced surgical time. Patients who were hypnotized required less of the analgesic lidocaine and the sedative propofol during surgery.

“Hypnosis helps patients to reduce their distress and have positive expectations about the outcomes of surgery,” Montgomery says. “I don’t think there is any magic or mind control.”

In a 2009 article in Health Psychology (Vol. 28, No. 3), Montgomery and colleagues reported on another study, which found that a combination of hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy could reduce fatigue for breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy.

Research has also shown the benefits of hypnosis for burn victims. In a 2007 report in Rehabilitation Psychology (Vol. 52, No. 3), Shelley Wiechman Askay, PhD, David R. Patterson, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Washington Medical School found that hypnosis before wound debridement significantly reduced pain reported by patients on one pain rating questionnaire.

No cure-all
People vary widely in their ability to respond to hypnotic suggestions, a trait which can be measured by standardized scales. But it isn’t well understood what causes the varying levels of “hypnotizability” or their significance.

Yapko says few clinicians use hypnotizability scales because responses to a structured test don’t predict how a patient will respond to hypnosis in treatment. He served as guest editor for a recent special issue of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis (Vol. 58, No. 2) that examined research on hypnosis and depression. In an editorial, Yapko urged more research and a rejection of outdated views that hypnosis can precipitate suicide or psychosis in depressed patients. Other articles examined how hypnosis can be integrated with cognitive-behavioral therapy or used with depressed patients and their families.

Willmarth says he doesn’t always use hypnotizibility scales with his patients, but will try a hypnosis session and measure the patient’s response to see if it is effective. “You have to be a little bit willing to fail in order to do it often enough to succeed,” he says.

Hypnosis may not succeed in all cases and can actually be detrimental in some instances, especially in the realm of retrieving memories.

Joseph P. Green, PhD, a psychology professor at Ohio State University at Lima, has researched how hypnotic suggestions can produce distorted or false memories. He also found that people may believe hypnotically induced memories are more reliable, mirroring a mistaken cultural belief that hypnosis acts like a truth serum. Hypnosis is “on thin ice” when used to recover memories, as is the case with most other memory retrieval techniques, Green says.

Hypnosis got a bad name in the 1990s when some therapists convinced patients they had been molested or abused as children because of hypnotically induced memories, which often had no evidence to support them. As a result, many innocent people were wrongly accused of abuse in hundreds of court cases, Yapko says.

“People didn’t really understand the suggestibility of memory,” he says. “That whole issue has pretty much fallen by the wayside now” because of advances in research.

In a 2007 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada established a precedent that post-hypnosis evidence is inadmissible in court because of its unreliability. In R. v. Trochym, the court overturned a murder conviction after a witness changed her timeline of events following a hypnosis session that was requested by detectives. The jury wasn’t told that the witness had been hypnotized or that she had changed her recollection.

“In sum, while it is not generally accepted that hypnosis always produces unreliable memories, neither is it clear when hypnosis results in pseudo-memories or how a witness, scientist or trier of fact might distinguish between fabricated and accurate memories,” the decision stated.

Up in smoke
Smokers also should be wary of the plethora of hypnosis programs and tapes peddled online with guarantees of instant success. “Despite the widespread use, the science warranting that popularity is suspect,” Green says.

Green began studying hypnosis and smoking cessation more than 25 years ago after seeing overblown claims from itinerant hypnotists who held weekend sessions in hotels before moving on to the next town. In a January article in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis (Vol. 52, No. 3), Green and Binghamton University psychology professor Steven Jay Lynn, PhD, wrote about the body of research on hypnosis and smoking cessation and found mixed results.

In a literature review published in 2000 (International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, Vol. 48, No. 2), Green and Lynn analyzed 59 studies on hypnosis and smoking cessation. While hypnosis was more successful than no treatment, it was generally equivalent to other smoking-cessation methods. However, many studies had combined hypnosis with cognitive-behavioral therapy or other treatment methods, so it was impossible to determine the effectiveness of hypnosis alone. Green says hypnosis may help smokers quit, but more research needs to be done. In a 2008 report published by the Cochrane Library, Neil C. Abbot, operations director for ME Research UK, and colleagues examined nine randomized trials and also found insufficient evidence to recommend hypnosis as a specific treatment for smoking cessation.

Learning the ropes
While more research is being conducted on the benefits of hypnosis, graduate schools are lagging behind in incorporating hypnosis training into psychology programs, say Yapko, Willmarth and Montgomery. “The universities have really dropped the ball by thinking hypnosis is a sideshow rather than being relevant to effective psychotherapy,” Yapko says.

Some graduate schools may not be convinced of the effectiveness of hypnosis or the research supporting its use, but other schools have developed clinical hypnosis classes, including Saybrook University’s Graduate College of Mind-Body Medicine in San Francisco, where Willmarth teaches a hypnosis course. At Washington State University, psychology professor Arreed Barabasz, PhD, directs the hypnosis laboratory and teaches graduate-level hypnosis courses and research seminars. He also is editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

Since many psychologists have never taken a hypnosis class as part of their education, they often seek training later in their careers. It can be bewildering to find a class, though, since a search for “hypnosis training” generates more than 600,000 hits on Google.

“You can go anyplace on the weekend and get a hypnosis certification,” Willmarth says. “You have thousands of lay hypnosis schools that are willing to train anyone who will pay the tuition.”

To make sure psychologists don’t end up with charlatan teachers, Willmarth recommends courses approved by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. ASCH also offers a certification in clinical hypnosis for licensed health-care professionals with at least a master’s degree. Certification requires at least 40 hours of ASCH-approved workshop training, 20 hours of individualized training and two years of independent practice using clinical hypnosis.

Willmarth says interest in clinical hypnosis is growing and more psychologists are learning how hypnosis can help their patients.

“It goes in waves,” he says. “Right now, we’re on an upswing.”

Cochrane Library
06-10-2010
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Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation

Background
Hypnotherapy is widely promoted as a method for aiding smoking cessation. It is proposed to act on underlying impulses to weaken the desire to smoke or strengthen the will to stop.

Objectives
To evaluate the efficacy of hypnotherapy for smoking cessation.

Search methods
We searched the Cochrane Tobacco Addiction Group Specialized Register and the databases MEDLINE, EMBASE, AMED, SCI, SSCI using the terms smoking cessation and hypnotherapy or hypnosis. Date of most recent searches July 2010. There were no language restrictions.

Selection criteria
We considered randomized controlled trials of hypnotherapy which reported smoking cessation rates at least six months after the beginning of treatment.

Data collection and analysis
Three authors independently extracted data on participant characteristics, the type and duration of the hypnotherapy, the nature of the control group, smoking status, method of randomization, and completeness of follow up. They also independently assessed the quality of the included studies.

The main outcome measure was abstinence from smoking after at least six months follow up. We used the most rigorous definition of abstinence in each trial, and biochemically validated rates where available. Those lost to follow up were considered to be smoking. We summarised effects as risk ratios (RR). Where possible, we performed meta‐analysis using a fixed‐effect model. We also noted any adverse events reported.

Main results
Eleven studies compared hypnotherapy with 18 different control interventions. There was significant heterogeneity between the results of the individual studies, with conflicting results for the effectiveness of hypnotherapy compared to no treatment, or to advice, or psychological treatment. We did not attempt to calculate pooled risk ratios for the overall effect of hypnotherapy. There was no evidence of a greater effect of hypnotherapy when compared to rapid smoking or psychological treatment. Direct comparisons of hypnotherapy with cessation treatments considered to be effective had confidence intervals that were too wide to infer equivalence.

Authors’ conclusions
We have not shown that hypnotherapy has a greater effect on six‐month quit rates than other interventions or no treatment. There is not enough evidence to show whether hypnotherapy could be as effective as counselling treatment. The effects of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation claimed by uncontrolled studies were not confirmed by analysis of randomized controlled trials.