Children should learn self-hypnosis to help them recover from surgery
The benefits of hypnotherapy for surgery have already been widely noted and discussed. Helping the patient to recover more quickly from the surgery and even acting as an alternative to traditional anaesthetics for small operations or as an enhancer to big operations. However, the benefits of hypnotherapy in children are yet to be noted.
According to a report in The Telegraph, children as young as five should be taught how to hypnotise themselves to feel less pain after an operation.
Children are far more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion than adults and this is why up to 80% of youngsters feel less pain if they are treated using the technique.
Evidence has shown that 8 children out of 10 felt significantly less pain when they had been hypnotised and even those whose pain levels weren’t dramatically reduced still reported from benefits from their increased relaxation.
Dr Christina Liossi, a psychologist from the University of Southampton, has called for hypnosis to be used more widely in the NHS to help with pain relief. She said: “Children are more susceptible to hypnotic suggestion, because they do not have the issues of control of misconceptions around hypnosis that adults do. There is clear evidence of the benefits of hypnosis in relieving different kinds of pain, but this is one of those examples where there is a gap between the evidence and the clinical practise.”