American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis

The national conversation continues to focus on the negative impact of social media on teens/young people. The lingering effects of the pandemic revealed sharp increases in the common practice of "compare and despair" as well as higher rates of loneliness, isolation, depression, and self-harming behaviors. In May 2023, the US Surgeon General warned that social media "is the defining public issue of our time" and is driving the teen mental health crisis. These concerns for the mental health of humans across the globe are real and dramatic...

This study investigated the impact of hypnotic suggestions on improving attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help (ATSPPH). The study administered the Chinese version of the ATSPPH scale on 303 college students, of which 61 with low levels of ATSPPH were recruited as the participants (male: 18; female: 43). All participants were tested with the Harvard Group Scale of Hypnotic Susceptibility, Form A, prior to the formal experiment and assigned with balancing hypnotic susceptibility in hypnotic suggestion, relaxation, or control groups...

This paper brings together concepts, tools, and case examples that provide guidance for ways to use process-oriented clinical hypnosis to shift perfectionistic tendencies to help resolve depression and enhance well-being. Perfectionism is a transdiagnostic risk factor for clinical and subclinical suffering of many types including depression. Over time, perfectionism is becoming more widespread. Perfectionism-related depression can be effectively treated when clinician attention is directed toward core skills and themes...

Helplessness and hopelessness are common key dynamics of depression that often inhibit therapeutic progress and client recovery. Based on a case example, this article examines the processes for effectively communicating therapeutic interventions aimed toward building hope when other approaches have failed. It explores the use of therapeutic metaphors including assessing for positive outcomes, building the PRO Approach for creating therapeutic metaphors and using Hope Theory as an example of an evidence-based process for facilitating both hope and enhanced treatment outcomes...

People struggling with depression are burdened by losses they can't and won't accept. They find themselves at odds not only with their circumstances, but also with symptomatic expressions of their exhausting efforts to shelter from, gird against, and contend with their pain and desolation. Their embattled sense of self gets no respite: Everything, including the depression itself, feels threatening, a violation, other . This article investigates why, and demonstrates how, hypnosis is particularly well suited for treating such self-referential, adversarial entanglements...

Depression in children and teens has been on the rise for several years. Recent increases in anxiety and loneliness, both contributors to the development of depression, are putting more young people at risk for chronic and comorbid mental health struggles. The use of hypnosis with depressed children offers the opportunity to target the identified skills depressed and anxious children need and is a modality clinicians should embrace. This article describes how to create hypnotic interventions focusing on improved emotional and cognitive management, better sleep, and the ability to make positive social connections...

It is a fundamental truth in living that the quality of your decisions shapes the quality of your life . One's cognitive style determines whether one is more likely to be detailed and linear in thinking or more general and impressionistic, obvious influences on the way experiences are interpreted and reactions formed. Global thinking, also referred to as over-general thinking, has been linked to depression for several reasons. These include the lack of detail in making important discriminations that would reduce or eliminate the kind of self-injurious and depressogenic decisions described in the "stress generation" model of depression...

Sleep disturbances take many forms. Negative health consequences are associated with nearly all of them. Insomnia, the most common sleep disturbance, can present as an inability to initiate sleep or to maintain sleep such that the restorative benefits of sleep are limited. This case report describes a client in her 60s who sought treatment for early morning awakening that persisted for four years despite the use of sleep-inducing medications. Her successful course of treatment utilized hypnotic suggestions and interactions that targeted distinctive features of the sleep cycle as well as her daily transition from wakefulness to sleep to early morning reawakening...

The clinical hypnosis literature suggests that confidence in new clinical skills is an important learning outcome; however, many current training standards for clinical hypnosis do not address outcomes such as confidence. To address this deficit, this pilot study asked whether clinical hypnosis instruction offered by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH) leads to learner confidence. A one-group observational A-B survey-based design examined baseline, expected, and post-training confidence in the use of skills necessary for clinical hypnosis...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Although the belief that hypnotizability is a mental dysfunction has been refuted over time, there is still research today that seeks to explore and clarify this preconception. The results of recent research indicate that, on the contrary, greater psychopathology is more frequent in subjects with low hypnotic susceptibility. Using the Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale type A (SHSS-A) for hypnotizability, Symptom Checklist-Revised (SCL-90-R) for psychopathology, and the Somatosensory Amplification Scale (SSAS) and Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) for psychosomatic dimensions, we found no relationship between baseline psychopathology, alexithymia and hypnotizability in 69 subjects with chronic pain in this retrospective observational study...

People, worldwide, are in dire need of stress regulation. This paper presents a six step alert self-hypnosis protocol that individuals can use to regulate a wide variety of stresses. A brief anonymized case reports from a diverse range of clients follows the protocol's six step outline. The step-by-step algorithm can be modified to address the unique circumstances of each client. Finally, summaries of neuroscience research provide possible explanations for the observed efficacy of the approach.

The usefulness of hypnosis in patients with obesity needs to be better understood in terms of various outcomes, in addition to weight loss. The aim of this research was to investigate the effects of hypnosis and self-hypnosis in combination with nutrition education for patients with obesity, as opposed to nutrition education alone, on the secondary outcomes of quality of life (QoL), coping strategies, and self-esteem within a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Eighty-two participants were included in this study (84...

The hypnotic turbo-induction technique has been used for more than three decades for various indications in dentistry and medicine. The use of the technique is described step by step using therapeutic communication and hypnotic suggestions in a dento-surgical treatment of a 48-year-old adult man. In a 15-minute appointment, two maxillary third molars (wisdom teeth) have been extracted without interruptions/complications by a dental team in a private practice trained in dental/medical hypnosis. The hypnotic turbo-induction technique proved to be a successful application method for anxiety reduction/relaxation, pain relief as well as postoperative wound healing after the extraction of wisdom teeth, which had to be extracted due to a medical indication...

This paper provides an overview of the life of the eminent psychologist and hypnosis researcher and theoretician Irving Kirsch. It describes the strenuous lives and legacy of his immigrant parents, his lesser know activities as a satirical editor of a tape that was nominated for a Grammy, and as a violin player. The trajectory of his professional life evidences his courage to question conventional ideas and psychotherapeutic and pharmaceutical practices. He has also been consistently a supportive and warm friend and colleague to many in the hypnosis and other fields...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Many psychological problems are maintained, in part, by dysfunctional response expectancies, and changing those expectations is an essential part of treatment. Hypnotic inductions alter response expectancies and have been shown empirically to substantially enhance the effects of psychotherapy. Therefore, hypnosis can be used therapeutically as a nondeceptive placebo. Expectancy plays a major role in hypnotic inductions and their effects. Clinical procedures suggested by these data are explored.

When it comes to antidepressant medications - popular, backbone drugs of modern psychiatry - even learned scholars and savvy clinicians find it difficult to separate honest, rigorous research from that which thrives on hidden agendas and ulterior motives. Fortunately, a mounting corpus of data-based studies, mostly meta-analyses, casts new and critical light on the clinical efficacy, side effects, and therapeutic outcomes of antidepressants. Spearheading these efforts over the past few decades, Irving Kirsch and colleagues have challenged the hegemonic view of antidepressants as an effective therapeutic intervention...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

This interview with Professor Irving Kirsch took place in late August, 2022. He recently turned 80 years old and agreed to focus his interview on topics and areas that illustrate his influence on the field of hypnosis. Professor Kirsch discusses the influences that shaped him as a person and scientist; what unites his theoretical and research work on hypnosis, placebo, and antidepressants. He also addresses the importance of response expectancies, why clinicians should learn hypnosis and what he considers the source of his greatest personal and professional fulfillments...