England cricketer Jonathan Trott, for four years the embodiment of the self-absorbed sporting hardman, has pulled out of the Ashes tour to Australia, citing depression as his ongoing problem.
He joins a string of cricketers like Marcus Trescothick and Mike Yardy who have suffered the same problem. England coach Andy Flower said: “Trotty has been suffering from a stress-related condition for quite a while.”
Trott himself said: “I don’t feel it is right that I’m playing knowing that I’m not 100% and I cannot currently operate at the level I have done in the past.”
And it’s not only sports stars who suffer from depression. Even well-known hypnotist Paul McKenna has suffered from it as have other famous people like Stephen Fry and McFly’s Tom Fletcher..
But hypnotherapy can help beat depression.
A study into the effects of treating depression with hypnotherapy, compared to cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) showed that, after 16 weeks of treatment of either hypnotherapy or CBT alone, patients from both groups significantly improved compared to baseline scores. However, the hypnotherapy group produced significantly larger changes.
Treating depression with hypnotherapy is now seen as an effective treatment for many individuals. Other recent studies have shown that it is more effective than cognitive-behavioural therapy, which is the most common therapy approach in treating clinical depression. Hypnotherapy for depression can help address the underlying cause as well as help individuals find much more effective coping behaviours. It can also help people achieve a happier mood and decrease or dispel the pessimistic and negative thoughts that generally accompany depression.
Depression can obscure rational, realistic thinking, making everything in life appear awful, all the time.
Hypnotherapy can help replace old thinking patterns with more useful ones.
A professional hypnotherapist, who is a member of the National Council for Hypnotherapy and who has experience of working with people to overcome depression, can help the sufferer to understand the impact of the past, to focus on the present in order to work towards the desired future.
In the main NCH members would treat mild and moderate depression with hypnotherapy. Some have specialist training and will work with severe, clinical and bi-polar depression if it is within their sphere of competence.