Cognitive behavioural therapy is more effective than standard care for people with hypochondria or health anxiety, say researchers writing in The Lancet recently
In their study, 14% of patients given CBT regained normal anxiety levels against 7% given the usual care of basic reassurance.
Between 10% and 20% of hospital patients are thought to worry obsessively about their health.
But a research snippet from a few years back showed that on research into public speaking anxiety showed the ‘additive’ value of hypnosis as an adjunct to CBT and potentially other evidence-based treatments.
And this is probably one of the most important treatment outcome studies available in relation to hypnotherapy. It showed hypnotherapy was an important treatment outcome study on public-speaking anxiety, a clinical trial comparing an established (evidence-based) CBT protocol for social phobia (social anxiety disorder) against the same protocol augmented by hypnosis, and a third (waiting list) control group.
Statistical analysis in this study showed that hypnosis generated greater expectation for improvement in symptoms of public speaking anxiety than did CBT alone.
In sum, the addition of hypnosis to a cognitive behavioural treatment of anxiety enhances clients’ therapeutic outcome expectancies. It also appears to promote greater improvement in both expected and experienced anxiety.
Behavioural improvement in hypnotic treatment is associated with positive initial attitudes toward hypnosis, and change in anxiety expectancy appears to be the central unifying characteristic among otherwise uncorrelated measures of change.
Hypnosis is a natural state of mind; people are often surprised that they hear every word and could get up and walk out of the room at any moment.
Unless the client enters a deeper state, they may not seem any different, just very relaxed. It’s similar to drifting off to sleep at night, that stage when one is not quite awake and not quite asleep, and might feel a sense of weightlessness or heaviness as all muscles relax.
Everyone experiences it differently, and a hypnotherapist will be able to reassure the client and help them relax and enjoy the experience.
Clinical Hypnotherapy means using advanced methods of hypnosis and other techniques to treat a variety of medical and psychological problems. It is estimated that over 85% of people will readily respond to clinical. It may even succeed where other, more conventional methods of treatment have not produced the desired results.
Modern Clinical Hypnotherapy is an ‘integrative’ field of study. This means that the best elements of many other forms of therapy have been integrated into Clinical Hypnotherapy. This includes behavioural psychology, cognitive psychology, EMDR, NLP as well as the most effective elements from the classical theories proposed by Freud, Jung and Adler, as well as the latest physiological research in terms of how the mind functions.
