The Royal Society of Medicine on Hypnosis

[Masha B]

Some good news for hypnotherapy - today the chair of the hypnosis section of the Royal Society of Medicine spoke on BBC on how desirable it would be to have hypnotherapy available as standard on the NHS for pain, anxiety, depression, IBS.

BBC News - Today - Hypnosis 'is more than a placebo'

Masha

[Bannick]

Although this is being taken seriously, it's not all good news. It wasn't long ago that RSM also heard that hypnosis should be used in place of anaesthetic for some procedures as it's safer and cheaper but nothing has progressed.

Also, it's been reported that hypnotherapy in hospitals should only be carried out by nurses and other health professionals who should be trained in hypnotherapy as there are so many poorly trained hypnotherapists out there. Like these health professionals aren't already overworked and there aren't already thousands of decent hypnotherapists out there!

At the end of the day, hypnotherapy needs compulsory regulation so the various idiots out there with poor (or no) hypnotherapy training are unable to call themselves hypnotherapists.

It will be interesting to see how this develops. Hypnotherapy is widely used at The Christie cancer hospital and other hospitals and palliative care organisations that have charity funding as well as NHS.

[Masha B]

I do agree with you, Bannick, re. concerns about slow progress and poor training standards. Lack of statutory regulation does mean that anyone can call themselves a hypnotherapist, a psychotherapist, a counsellor etc and there are no guarantees of safety or quality. Voluntary regulation can fill the gap somewhat - and many of my colleagues believe that it's more than enough - I myself am sitting on a fence as I can see pros and cons of both and am not sure if there is a perfect solution.

In terms of the progression of hypnotherapy and other less orthodox modalities in the NHS - yes this is painfully slow, but working within NHS itself I can see how the drip, drip effect is gradually making an impact - I do work in a much more progressive NHS trust than many, and am fortunate to be able to teach nurses, doctors and other staff (I work in the staff support team) self-help techniques from a range of complementary approaches, including self-hypnosis, during stress management and sleep workshops, as well as in one-to-one sessions. Quite a few of them are now intending to undertake hypnotherapy training!

Masha

[Lavandula]

When I heard this news report I was at first pleased to hear that the RSM wanted Hypnotherapy to be used more widely in the NHS to treat chronic pain, anxiety etc. but then when I heard what they were saying about only medically trained people providing it, it did make me worry.

Back in January I had a foot operation and the anaesthetist got me to visualise myself walking along a beach while she was injecting pain meds and putting me under anaesthetic which I thought was really good (I had told her I was a Hypnotherapist so maybe she was doing it for that reason). I think if NICE were to recommend Hypnotherapy for various other conditions like it does for IBS, hypnotherapy would be more widely accepted by the medical profession and GPs in particular.

I agree with the RSM and both of you with regards to regulation but I do not think that it should be restricted to just medically trained professionals. Just because someone is medically trained, it doesn't mean they're going to make a good hypnotherapist!