Living Skillfully: Your Mind and Health

Earlier this month, Professor David Speigel of Stanford University addressed the joint conference of the Royal Society of Medicine, the British Society of Clinical and Academic Hypnosis and the British Society of Medical and Dental Hypnosis.

(The what? Yes, that in itself is pretty amazing – that the RSM is having a joint conference with hypnosis societies.)

In his talk, he called on the NICE (which is “the independent organisation responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health” in Britain, according to its website) to approve the use of hypnotherapy for “the treatment of conditions ranging from allergies and high blood pressure to the pain associated with bone marrow transplantation, cancer treatment and anaesthesia for liver biopsy. Nice has already approved the technique for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome”, according to the report in the Guardian.

Unfortunately the article closes with a poorly-informed quote from the chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners:

It is a useful tool used by some GPs and patients for relaxation, but I don’t think it is something that we should support being rolled out to all medical students and all doctors. We can’t call on the NHS to support it without there being a firm medical and economic basis, and I’m not convinced those have been proved to exist.

He seemingly hasn’t done his reading. As I mentioned a little while back, a 2002 meta-study concluded that 89% of surgical patients would benefit from hypnosis, and a 2007 study estimated a 9% cost saving could result. Both these studies were published in hightly reputable mainstream medical journals.

photo credit: Brendan Adkins

Gradually, mind-body medicine and techniques such as hypnosis are being accepted into mainstream medical practice. I look forward to the day when I, or my colleagues, can set up practice in a clinic with a group of doctors, dentists and physiotherapists and nobody thinks it’s at all surprising.

Back in the 50s and 60s, Dave Elman taught hundreds of American doctors and dentists how to use hypnosis. Sadly, a lot of ground has been lost since, but we are slowly seeing it recovered.

Professor Spiegel is at Stanford, which has long had a significant research programme in hypnosis. The classic text Hypnosis in the Relief of Pain (Hilgard, Hilgard and Barber) came out of research in Stanford’s laboratories. He and other researchers are carrying on a tradition of thorough scientific investigation of hypnosis extending back to at least the 1930s.

Convincing “mainstream” medical practitioners of the benefits of hypnosis is, thanks to them, no longer a problem of lack of evidence. It’s a marketing and PR problem.

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