Stop Smoking Hypnosis
Can Stop Smoking Hypnosis Really Help Your Quit?
Some methods of quitting smoking show better results than others when you look at the bigger picture of all the different types of stop smoking programs out there. A number of major research studies into the effect of hypnosis on smoking cessation, for example, have shown long-term success rates of over 90 per cent claimed in a study by T. Von Dedenroth, based on 1,000 smokers using hypnotherapy, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis.
Based on a one-year follow up, an 88 per cent success rate was recorded and reported in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Published research findings by Hall for Hypnotherapy claim success rates of 88 per cent. Individual hypnotherapists widely claim success rates of over 90 per cent.
An article in New Scientist (October 1992) put hypnosis at the top of the list for effective treatment. The headline ran ‘Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit’. In fact this study included ‘simple relaxation’, so understated the effectiveness of the better, more focused hypnosis treatments at the time, and more so now.
Hypnosis or hypnotherapy, have not enjoyed the sponsorship of the NRT and pharmaceutical industry, so there are few large scale studies to draw upon. There is no tangible ‘product’, and hypnotherapists do not combine to operate as large corporations, so cannot fund long-term research costs.
The aim of stop smoking hypnotherapy intervention is for a permanent cure, of course, and it would take many years to get valid results anyway. In consequence of all this, the approach has not been adopted by the main health and anti-smoking agencies who issue advice.
As if this wasn’t enough to keep stop smoking hypnosis techniques out of the smoking cessation slakes, there are special problems of methodology in conducting scientific studies.
For example, scripts or the words used during the hypnotic trance have not been standardized, so the significance of this aspect of the treatment has not been captured. This explains why the success rates of over 90 per cent consistently claimed, but which clearly just apply to certain skilled practitioners, do not figure in larger studies including good, bad and indifferent practitioners.
In some cases basic relaxation methods and meditation qualify as hypnotherapy. In other cases, while the main smoking-related habits are ‘cured’, because of insufficient preparation and depth others are not even addressed. Therefore, however successful the stop smoking hypnosis technique, any such untreated behavior can – and usually does – result in a relapse.
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