The potential to Save £Millions
The Royal Society of Medicine has called for hypnotherapy to be made available on the NHS to treat a variety of issues, believing that the NHS could save millions of pounds by making more use of this often-misunderstood approach.
Hypnotherapy is already widely known for its use in helping people lose weight, quit smoking or overcome a phobia, but some NHS trusts are already using it in a variety of areas such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Birthing and pain control. It is also gaining acceptance in many areas including fertility issues, OCD, sleep disorders, addictions, stress, anxiety, and confidence. Related techniques such as Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) are already widely used successfully in fields such as business and sports performance.
A word of Caution
The Royal Society of Medicine goes on to say that they think the failure of take up of hypnotherapy within the NHS is broadly down to the enormous amount of poorly trained therapists in practice. Many people don’t realise that hypnotherapy isn’t regulated in the UK and the majority of local practitioners have had little or no formal training.
The Odiham Clinic Hypnotherapy specialist Garry Coles, one of few hypnotherapy practitioners in the country already working partially within the NHS setup and also in partnership with local GP’s, agrees. Garry says, “The effectiveness of hypnotherapy in treating a variety of conditions and problems is widely misunderstood by the general public, whose only knowledge of the subject has mainly been gleaned from entertainment shows and sensationalist media”.
How to Protect Yourself
Garry therefore advises the public to protect themselves by being very careful and vigilant over their choice of therapist. “There as so few hypnotherapists aligned to the NHS (although many claim to be registered with the NHS which is untrue), so it is imperative to choose somebody from a reputable self-regulating body, preferably a full time practitioner and ideally with University qualifications in Clinical Hypnosis”.