Hypnotherapy Could Help You
Written by Stuart Stevens | Friday, 26 October 2007 | There are 2 comments
Hypnotherapy has been used as a smoking cessation tool for many years 
Research done on different smoking cessation methods shows that hypnotherapy is an extremely useful tool in smoking cessation. The researchers said that by working with a hypnotherapist along with other smoking cessation treatments hardened smokers were much more likely to quit their habit. The researchers said that when they gave smokers some free hypnotherapy after they had been hospitalised they were much more likely to be not smoking in six months time than those people who only used nicotine replacement therapies or who decided to just go ‘cold turkey.’
In all 67 smokers were looked at and it was seen that half of them who used a hypnotherapist alone or in a combination with a nicotine replacement drug quit the habit. Only sixteen percent of those who used nicotine replacement alone had still quit the habit after six months. Interestingly and surprisingly 25 percent of those people who just went cold turkey on their cigarette habit quit the habit implying therefore that using nicotine replacement therapy could have a negative effect!
Hypnotherapy has been used as a smoking cessation tool for many years however its clinical effectiveness is not the same for all people. Many people say that hypnotherapy is an unreliable method of getting rid of your smoking habit however this new research shows that it is extremely effective especially when it is used in tandem with some other smoking cessation remedies.
The researchers also noted from the volunteers of their study that people who decided to quit smoking after being hospitalised due to heart problems were more likely to give up smoking than those volunteers who had been admitted to hospital for lung diseases. The figures showed that 46 percent of people who had been hospitalised for heart problems quit their habit whereas only sixteen percent of those with lung problems did the same.
There are 2 comments on this article.
Smoking Specialist said:
Not very impressed with your science on this article!
You have lumped the hypnotherapy patients in with those who also used NRT.
You have compared them only with the "cold turkeys" and those who only used NRT.
The NHS offers NRT combined with personal counselling/support. This has been proved time and again to be the most effective method for most people to stop smoking. That's why it's allowed to be offered on the NHS.
Great to see some attempts to evaluate hypnotherapy as a smoking cessation tool - obviously works for some of those who've paid for it so that's great. But it's not helpful to compare apples with pears.
Making sure people get the right smoking cessation treatment matters - half of all smokers die from it. Sorry, it matters more than people making a living from whatever treatment they offer.
smoking cessation specialist said:
Hello Stop Smoking specialist, I totally agree with you that making sure people have the right treatment and tools to help them quit properly, rather than profit. But if you look deeper at the research and past the research of pharmaceutical based programmes, the evidence points towards hypnotherapy as the most effective treatment out there for smoking cessation. In 1992 the New Scientist (Issue 1845, Oct) reviewed smoking cessation treatments and collected from statistics from more than 600 studies, covering almost 72,000 people in America, Scandinavia & elsewhere in Europe & including 48 studies of hypnosis covering 6000 smokers. The New Scientist, an independent publication, concluded that hypnotherapy is the most effective treatment to help people stop smoking. Success rates for keeping off the cigarettes a year later quoted in the report included willpower (6%), nicotine gum (10%), patches (13%), nicotine patches & counselling (20%), acupuncture (24%), suggestion hypnosis/listening to tapes (30%) and single session hypnosis using the latest relaxation techniques (60%). Although the new drug treatments, work better than willpower or NRT, but they're not exactly that effective with 18% and 22% staying quit a year later for Zyban and Champix respectively (stats quoted from articles on Quit.org.uk). The fact the NRT only produces an uplift of 4-7% on willpower, suggests that it’s a placebo. Hardly what I would call a success and if it was for any other medical treatment, the producers would have to rethink it. Could you imagine a painkiller being sold on the market advertising a 13% success rate? Unlikely. Furthermore, in 1968 Von Dedenroth reported in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis a stop smoking success rate of 94% over an 18-month period with no less than a 1,000 smokers. This technique was a far more advanced structured form of hypnotherapy than quoted in the New Scientist study. Yes, I am a hypnotherapist, but also ex-smoker. As an ex-smoker I know how hard it was to give up with willpower and patches, which was why I did the research to find and learn the technique to give my clients the very best service and chance to quit. The technique I use has been tried and tested for over 20 years and has many similarities to Dedenroth’s work. It is no surprise that it’s been able to reach a comparably high success-rate. The hurdle that hypnotherapy has in terms of proving ‘clinically’ that it’s the best method to quit smoking is funding. Most hypnotherapists are sole traders and certainly don’t have the big budgets that drug company do to prove their treatments have an effect. They have to rely on telephone surveys and commitment to helping clients quit. And yes there are big differences among hypnotherapists in terms of success rates. But it’s largely down to technique - a good hypnotherapist using a bad technique won’t produce as good results as a bad hypnotherapist with a good technique. To provide clinical proof and give smokers all the options/facts, would it not then make sense that NHS/government funding should be invested in hypnotherapy or at the very least researching it properly? Having said that, as clients have to pay for hypnotherapy and most hypnotherapists rely on word of mouth as a major part of their marketing, if it didn’t work, quite simply they wouldn’t have a business.
Fields marked with * are required.
