Depression is one of the most commonly treated mental disorders by mental health professionals. Cognitive behaviour therapy and antidepressants are the most common treatment, however, many people with depression don’t respond to these treatments, 40% to 50% of depressed patients don’t respond to antidepressants. On the other hand when testing controls of depressed patients receiving Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), against the experimental group receiving Cognitive Hypnotherapy (CH), the group receiving CH showed greater reduction not only in depression, but also anxiety and hopelessness scales. (Alladin & Allibhai, 2007).
CBT is one of the most studied and practiced forms of psychosocial therapy for depressed patients. This also has limitations however, as a significant amount of patients also don’t respond to this treatment. These treatments as well as not being effective for everyone, they only address depression and not comorbid disorders such as a patient who suffers from depression and anxiety. These limit one disorders treatment at a time. So in the case of a patient suffering from depression and anxiety their depression would be the focus of CBT while the patients anxiety goes untreated (Alladin A. 2009).
If we implement cognitive hypnotherapy we can solve this problem. Cognitive hypnotherapy incorporates CBT with hypnotherapy to heighten unconscious awareness. Depression is fairly debilitating and quite common, as it is referred to as the common cold of mental disorders. Despite this there’s little work to represent the effectiveness in treating Depression with CH. The available resources on CH used to treat Depression is limited, seeing as there is only one published study specifically on the use of hypnosis treating depression in clinical populations (Alladin & Allibhai, 2007)(Yapko, 2010).
In a separate study 84 depressed patients were randomly assigned to either 16 weeks of CBT or CH alone. Both groups showed improvement, however, the CH group showed greater decrease on Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories, and Beck Hopelessness scale (Alladin & Allibhai, 2007). CH can be used to treat a wide range of depressed patients. The template for treating depression with CH can be applied to other medical and psychological disorders so the study is not just limited to this application but also the clinicians creativity in applying hypnosis along with other treatments for such disorders (Alladin, A. 2009).
Works:
Alladin, A. & Allibhai A. (2007). Cognitive Hypnotherapy for Depression: An Empirical Investigation. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. 55 (2), p 147-166.
Yapko, M.D. (2010). Hypnosis in the Treatment of Depression: An Overdue Approach for Encouraging Skillful Mood Management. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. 58(2), 137-146.
Melvin S. Marsh is a certified hypnotherapist serving Atlanta GA, Aiken SC, Augusta GA, Blairsville GA, and Cary NC. He performs hypnotherapy appointments both in person and worldwide virtually. He can be reached at www.afterhourshypnotherapy.com .
