Readers of the LCCH News may recall that last year one brave hypnotherapist - Ursula James - submitted all her “stop smoking” patients for a study on the effectiveness of hypnotherapy in smoking cessation. This retrospective study -
recently published in the European Journal of General Practice - suggested strongly that hypnotherapy may be as good, or even better than, existing treatments for smoking such as Nicotine patches and/or Zyban.

These conventional treatments are offered free by the NHS in national stop smoking clinics. The government is spending about twenty million pounds a year on this treatment which at best will stop about 23% of people at one year from smoking.

Even at this high cost this is considered good value, as the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) - the body which decides value for money and hence what treatments will be approved for NHS usage - sets a threshold of £30,000 per life year saved by new treatments. The stop smoking clinics seem good value, costing about £600-£750 per life year, gained despite their relatively poor results as smoking kills so many people - about 120,000 per year and 1:2.5 of those who smoke.

How much more cost effective then could hypnotherapy be? Within deprived areas around the country 'Sure Start' localities have been defined (a new government initiative to 'break the cycle of disadvantage for the current generation of young children'). Various targets have been set for this project - one of which is to reduce by 10% those mothers who smoke whilst pregnant.

This is a new pot of money, some of which has been made available within the Barking and Havering area for a trial of hypnotherapy in smoking cessation. To this end, Ursula James (Vice Principal LCCH) and Dr Mark Feldman (President of the British Association of Medical Hypnosis) recently set up a training day for experienced hypnotherapists to introduce this new project.

Ursula James has done a great deal of work in producing an Expert System: Stop Smoking™ hypnotherapy programme. This innovative system allows standardization of the approach, taking the therapist out of the equation. Before those of you (hypnotherapists) out there get alarmed, consider this: to unlock the great potential of the NHS, we must produce evidence based results which will require huge numbers of patients. The only way for us to do this is for all participating hypnotherapists to follow EXACTLY the same protocol - which is still tailored to the patient but in a pre-defined way.

Those hypnotherapists who attended the initial training received a cetificate stating that they have been approved to work within the NHS.

The next step is that stop smoking clinics operating within ‘Sure Start’ areas will refer to approved hypnotherapists as an alternative to offering standard treatments. The results of this project will be carefully followed up - all patients will be seen monthly for one year to ensure that they have not restarted smoking. We will then be able to compare hypnotherapy with Nicotine patches and Zyban directly.

The Heart Hospital Research Project

Many of you already know that the LCCH has been working with Dr. Peter Taggert at The Heart Hospital, on a research project that looks at the effect of positive and negative emotions on the heart. The first phase of the project has now been completed. In this phase various heart readings were recorded whilst the subjects were in a state of hypnosis experiencing positive and negative emotions. A number of protocols were developed and studied.

The second phase of the project involved monitoring the heart readings of subjects whilst studying the same protocols as in phase one but this time without hypnosis. More volunteers who have no previous experience of hypnosis are required for this phase so, if you have friends or family members between the ages of 18 - 35 years who wish to participate, then please call Avy Joseph on 020-8674 1233. (Volunteers are required to attend twice and will receive £30-00 per visit.)

The third phase of the project is already under development and involves studying Cardiac patients at Barnet General Hospital. We are delighted with the progress of this research and will keep you up-to-date with it. The findings of the study will of course be published once the project is finished.