Research on Hypnosis for Pain and Stress Relief - Hypnosis For a Change

Research on Hypnosis and Pain

A substantial amount of research has been done on the use of hypnosis. Pain control has been one of the most studied areas. I have reviewed many research articles. I have tried to select some of the better studies (controlled studies, reviews and meta-analysis) and provide you with some of the conclusions the authors came to. I will be adding to this page over time so please visit again.

Hypnosis found to be effective in the treatment of pain

A meta-review analyzing the quality of 23 previous reviews concluded: “There was sufficient evidence, of sufficient quality, for a number of high quality review studies to have concluded that hypnosis has demonstrable efficacy in the treatment of pain” (Hawkins, R. 2001)

For 75% of the population studied hypnosis provided substantial pain relief

A meta-analysis found that “based on analysis of 27 effect sizes and more than 900 participants, for 75% of the population, hypnosis provided substantial pain relief” (Montgomery et al., 2000)

Hypnosis more effective than many other treatments

A review of 19 controlled trials of hypnosis treatment for chronic pain funded by the US national institute of health concludes (Jensen and Patterson 2006):

"hypnotic analgesia produces significantly greater decreases in pain relative to no-treatment and to some non hypnotic interventions such as medication management, physical therapy and education/ advice"
"most of the pre to post-treatment improvements in pain intensity in these studies hover somewhere between 17% and 35%"
"We view the most important clinical implication of the findings from this review as follows; Hypnosis has been greatly underused as a treatment and should be at least offered as an option to far greater numbers of patients with chronic pain. Further, hypnosis is almost always a benign approach with a very little likelihood of causing negative side effects”

Hypnosis frequently used during surgery in Belgium

Researchers in Belgium report using hypnosis combined with local anaesthesia and minimal conscious sedation in over 3,300 surgical procedures including thyroid and parathyroid surgery (Faymonville, et al. 2006)

For a good video done by the BBC on the use of hypnosis in medicine and surgery (historical and current) click here

Brain scans show definite changes during hypnosis and a decrease in pain

A series of research studies using PET scans to observe what is happening in the brain during hypnosis, as well as during pain, is summarized in an article published in 2006. (Faymonville et al 2006). They report;

When healthy volunteer subjects were asked to listen to autobiographical information (this was the non-hypnotized control group) their brains showed activation in the anterior part of both temporal lobes, basal forebrain structures, and some mesiotemporal areas. “During hypnosis, compared to our control task, a vast activation was observed that involved occipital, parietal, precentral, prefrontal and cingulate cortices”. These results show that in the hypnotic state brain processes are different from simple memory recall.

They also showed that during hypnosis compared to normal alertness there was “prominent decreased activity” in the precueous (an area hypothesized to be responsible for our monitoring of the world around us)

Both sensory (i.e. pain intensity) and affective (i.e. unpleasantness) components of pain were reduced by 50% during hypnosis.

They conclude their research “reinforces the idea that not only pharmacological but also psychological strategies for relieving pain can modulate the interconnected network of cortical and sub cortical regions that participate in the processing of painful stimuli”.

References:
Faymonville, M., Boly, M., Laureys, S. (2006). Functional neuroanatomy of the hypnotic state. Journal of Physiology – Paris. 99, 463–469.

Hawkins, R. (2001). A systematic meta-review of hypnosis as an empirically supported treatment for pain. Pain Reviews. 8, 47-73.

Jensen, M., Patterson, D.R., (2006). Hypnotic treatment of chronic pain. Journal of Behavioural Medicine. 29(1), 95-124.