Hypnosis in General Practice to Help Patients

More and more General Practice surgeries are introducing hypnosis as an option for their patients whether to help them stop smoking, help with mental health problems or the sort of medical problems with which hypnosis has helped over the years.

I found this article Impact on health status of a hypnosis clinic in general practice

Keywords:general practice;hypnosis;hypnotherapy;mental health;smoking

Abstract
The impact on health status of hypnosis was investigated in a primary care NHS GP surgery clinic, with referrals from a Local Health Care Cooperative (LHCC) with 85,000 patients. The Medical Outcomes Study Short Form-36 Health Survey (SF36) pre and post treatment was completed by patients referred with mental health problems, medical problems and for smoking cessation. One hundred and fifteen patients successfully completed SF36 questionnaires before and six weeks after the intervention. Categories of treatment were smoking cessation, mental health, and medical. In the case of referrals for smoking cessation there were no significant changes in mental, social or physical function six weeks after the intervention. In the case of mental health referrals, which were predominantly anxiety related, there was a large and significant effect on the SF-36 in emotional role and mental role and a moderate effect on social role and mental health. Self-hypnosis was in widespread use after treatment, even in those whose perceived problem appeared not to have improved. The results suggest that simple hypnosis techniques could have a significant impact on mental health. This could have implications for promoting mental health as well as for treating mental illness, and needs to be tested further by a randomized, controlled trial. Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

Impact on health status of a hypnosis clinic in general practice by
Alastair Dobbin,*, Steve Faulkner, David Heaney, Sivasubramaniam Selvaraj, John Gruzelier
Article first published online: 28 FEB 2006

DOI: 10.1002/ch.302

Copyright © 2004 British Society of Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis

Contemporary Hypnosis
Volume 21, Issue 4, pages 153–160, December 2004

Antonia Harrison is the English Hypnotherapist in Belgium available to help people make positive change.