The danger of hypnosis (Part 2)

Last month, I commented about an article and asked, if hypnosis is dangerous. The story was about a woman that sued a hypnotist on molestation charges.

Today, I found this article in Asia One which initially sounds quite good. It says that more and more patients ask doctors about hypnosis. This is probably based on the tremendous number of advertisements that offer hypnosis courses, which assist growing awareness about the tool.

The article raises the reasonable question if hypnotherapy should be regulated by the Ministry of Health. While it describes the situation in Singapore, this is a reasonable question for Malaysia as well.

There are some points that can be considered. Hypnosis is a very effective tool to assist clients overcome certain psychological issues and "install" new behaviours. It is known for weigh loss, smoking cessation, performance enhancement, anxiety- and fear removal and much more.

The challenge arises when a new hypnotherapist lays his or her hand on deeper issues such as depression, suicidal cases, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or even other addictions. It is here where extreme care is warranted. Curiosity and the willingness to help might lead the newbie to start working with the client and then be caught off-guard by unforeseen client reactions.

In my training, we once had a woman who, in a simple exercise, went deep into her emotions and started to cry and wail uncontrollably for about 2 hours. It was a simple exercise, that was suppose to take 10 minutes. The practitioner afterwards told me that he was happy that I was around as he thought he wouldn’t have been able to manage the case by himself. He only wanted to learn the tools for self-improvement and coaching in his company.

Nevertheless, all practitioners and even the woman told me after the training that it was an eye-opener and worth learning.

But this can happen and it is in these situations when experience with such cases is of utmost necessity.

The article quotes a Dr. Kwek, the Head of the Department of Psychological Medicine at Tan Tock Seng Hospital. He says that "it is better to take a strict and conservative approach when regulating its use in treating clinical conditions.

Dr Kwek said : "The technique of hypnosis may be straightforward, but we’re often dealing with people with psychological issues, sometimes without obvious psychiatric symptoms. When you go into their subconscious, you may chance upon past trauma or suppressed memories.

A hypnotherapist not trained in healthcare and without psychological training may not be equipped to handle such situations and the person receiving the hypnotherapy may end up worse."

I might even agree but looking around and seeing the problems caused by "official healthcare" does not cause me to worry less. How often do we have cases where a doctor messed up ? Not only in Malaysia, but worldwide ?

Also, traditional (that is what I call modern) medicine is often at the end with their abilities in many dis-eases and nowadays, even doctors in the Western World look at hypnosis as the way forward.

I believe it is the usual up and down with hypnosis, as it was for the last 100 or 200 years. But its influence is growing and the research on neuroscience and discoveries on how brain and mind work clearly indicates that hypnosis has the ability to go on for a long, long time.