CEU's
Hypnosis Recognized by AMA
In 1958 Hypnosis was recognized by the American Medical Association as a legitimate, safe approach to medical and psychological problems. Today more people recognize that the mind and body interact. Mind and body are integrated parts of a whole being; a change in one part affects the other. Hypnosis is a normal state of consciousness. Hypnosis can be defined as concentrated and directed daydreaming.
A person in Hypnosis does not lose control. Whereas the word sleep is sometimes used to describe the trance state, the patient is far from being asleep. A person in Hypnosis is aware of his surroundings in a detached sort of way and is more receptive to acceptable suggestions. There are many misconceptions about Hypnosis.
Hypnosis is a natural state that we have all experienced. An example of this is whenever it is really important for you to get up at an unusual time and you wake up ten minutes before the alarm goes off you are responding to a post-hypnotic suggestion. A mother who sleeps through a thunderstorm but awakens when her sick child moans, again, responds to a post-hypnotic suggestion.
Actually, all Hypnosis is self-Hypnosis. Anyone who wants to be hypnotized can be hypnotized. A hypnotized person will not accept any idea or suggestion that is against his/her religion, upbringing, morality, or against 'his grain." The patient achieves his/her own hypnotic state. The Medical Hypnoanalyst is the guide.
Professional Seeking to Learn?
Other professional organizations that are open to training qualified (usually meaning licensed) professionals in Hypnoanalysis view the modality as something that should be dabbled in only as an adjunctive part of one's profession. This organization sees Medical Hypnoanalysis as a primary treatment that compares favorably with other fields of health care.
Founded in 1974, the American Academy of Medical Hypnoanalysts is a non-profit organization.
Under the umbrella of AAMH, hypnoanalysis is used by qualified persons in medicine, psychology and other scientific fields to decrease human suffering and promote human welfare.
This organization requires the same academic training and licensing background as others, but views the profession as being one of its own. That is the preponderance of one's work week is to be in the field of "Medical Hypnoanalysis" in order to be a clinical or board certified member. If you are a professional with a Masters degree or above in the field of medicine or human services and would like to learn more about training in this modality, the most extensive of any training in the country, you can either contact me directly or the:
American Academy of Medical Hypnoanalysts at www.aamh.com or call at 1-888-454-9766 (1-888-4HYPNO)
Areas of Application for Clinical Hypnoanalysis from William C. Wester, II, EdD
Addictions & Alcoholism, Age regression (trauma), Amnesia, Anger control, Anxiety, Anorexia Nervosa, Assertiveness,
Behavior disorders, Biofeedback, Borderline Personality, Bulimia, Childhood fears, Concentration, Conversion Disorders, Crisis intervention,
Depression, Dissociation Disorders, Dyslexia, Ego Strengthening, Enhancing social skills,
Family Therapy, Forensics (Recall, enhancement of memory), Fugue states, Grief/Loss, Group Hypnoanalysis,
Hypnodrama, Hypochondriacal, Hysterical symptoms, Impotence, Inhibited Sexual Desire,
Juvenile delinquency, Learning disorders, Low self-esteem,
Management training, Mentally retarded patients, Dissociative Personality disorder, previously know as Multiple Personality Disorder,
Munchausen's Syndrome, Nail biting, Obesity, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder,
Orgasmic Dysfunctions, Paraphilias (Exhibitionism,Voyeurism, Pedophilia, etc.)"Pee-Shy" problems, Performance anxiety, Phobias, Post traumatic Stress Disorder, Premature Ejaculation, Psychogenic pain, Psychotic patients,
Rape victims, Reading problems, Recovery of repressed material, Retarded Ejaculation Self-Hypnoanalysis, Severely Disturbed, Sexual Addiction, Sexual Aversion, Sleep disorders, Smoking, Social skills training, Speech Disorders, Sports/Athletic performance, Stress Management,
Test Anxiety, Thumb sucking, Tics, Tourette's Syndrome, Trichotillomania (hair pulling), Type-A Behavior, Vaginismus.
A Meta-Analysis of Antidepressant Medication
Abstract
Mean effect sizes for changes in depression were calculated for 2,318 patients who had been randomly assigned to either antidepressant medication or placebo in 19 double-blind clinical trials. As a proportion of the drug response, the placebo response was constant across different types of medication (75%), and the correlation between placebo effect and drug effect was .90. These data indicate that virtually all of the variation in drug effect size was due to the placebo characteristics of the studies. The effect size for active medications that are not regarded to be antidepressants was as large as that for those classified as antidepressants, and in both cases, the inactive placebos produced improvement that was 75% of the effect of the active drug. These data raise the possibility that the apparent drug effect (25% of the drug response) is actually an active placebo effect. Examination of pre-post effect sizes among depressed individuals assigned to no-treatment w ait-list control groups suggest that approximately one quarter of the drug response is due to the administration of an active medication, one half is a placebo effect, and the remaining quarter is due to other nonspecific factors.
Irving Kirsch, Ph.D.
University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT
Guy Sapirstein, Ph.D.
Westwood Lodge Hospital, Needham, MA
Prevention & Treatment, Volume 1, Article 0002a, posted June 26, 1998
Copyright 1998 by the American Psychological Association
The Serotonin Surprise
Harvard psychiatrist Joseph Glenmullen finds such brain-altering effects more disturbing than captivating. In 2000 he published "Prozac Backlash: Overcoming the Dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and Other Antidepressants with Safe, Effective Alternatives", a book that fine points his brief against the drugs: They cause far more serious and widespread side effects than their manufacturers report; the Food and Drug Administration has failed to adequately look into these reports; patients' complaints about the drugs are for the most part ignored; and the drugs are prescribed too frequently and for far too wide a range of distress.
Conceivably most imperative, Glenmullen believes the way the drugs are marketed suggests that depression is first and foremost a biological problem to be solved by biochemical means, instead of a multifaceted biopsychosocial phenomenon that can be resolved in many cases with traditional psychotherapies and not including drugs. Glenmullen, who does prescribe serotonin enhancers when he deems it suitable, likens them to such stimulants as amphetamines and cocaine--drugs that were once used extensively, without apprehension of side effects, to give people additional vigor, enhanced mood, and improved focus.
Glenmullen long suspected that drugs that modify serotonin metabolism cause profound changes in the brain. He bases his suspicion on a body of research during the last 20 years by scientists investigating another class of drugs that includes MDMA (Ecstasy) as well as fenfluramine, the diet drug recently removed from the market because of its relationship with heart valve troubles.
These drugs do more than just obstruct serotonin reuptake; they first and foremost stimulate the release of large quantities of serotonin from nerve endings into the brain. The consequential deluge is thought to cause the mind-altering effects of MDMA. And that deluge, some scientists quarrel, leaves brain damage in its wake. When monkeys and rats are given high doses of serotonin releasers--up to 40 times the dose that people usually take--the microscopic structural design of their brains looks dissimilar from normal brains.
The nerve fibers (axons) that carry serotonin to the target cells seem to change their form and reduce in number--effects some scientists claim are appropriately understood as brain damage. Glenmullen is persuaded these results raise questions about other serotonergic drugs like Prozac, and a modern study has only amplified his concern. Research conducted by neurologist Madhu Kalia at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the rats given especially high doses (up to 100 times the human dose, by body weight) of Prozac and Zoloft contained the same kinds of brain abnormalities--neurons with swollen or kinked tips--as rats who were given high doses of serotonin releasers.
Jim O'Callaghan, a, Centers for Disease Control neuroscientist and a coauthor of the study, doesn't assume the results indicate that Prozac causes brain damage. To the contrary, he and his team believe that neither serotonin enhancers nor serotonin releasers are appropriately understood as neurotoxic. According to O'Callaghan, the point of the study was to show that even a drug like Prozac, which practically no one claims is neurotoxic, could produce some of the same abnormalities as the serotonin releasers.
Other scientists, in his view, have been too fast to "deduce what they think is going on in the [nerve] fibers" from two pieces of data: The serotonin releasers deplete serotonin, and the microphotographs of brains exposed to high doses of these drugs look abnormal. O'Callaghan believes that scientists should rethink their definition of neurotoxicity, because elevated doses of Prozac and Zoloft, which do not reduce serotonin, cause the same transient abnormalities as do high doses of drugs such as MDMA. (Blair Austin, a spokesperson for Eli Lilly, producer of Prozac, points out that the abnormalities have not been connected to any physiological result. Furthermore, he says, based on the high dosage and other circumstances of the study, "the findings are only of minor toxicological importance and pose no risk to human safety.")
The perhaps surprising fact that scientists don't have the same opinion on what constitutes brain damage shouldn't, according to Glenmullen, distract us from what he thinks are the crucial implications of this study. "I'm not saying that Prozac is neurotoxic," he told me. "But it should be public policy with a neurotransmitter booster to look for neurotoxicity. And if that information is out there, the people ought to have it."
Glenmullen points out that street drugs are much more carefully scrutinized for potential harmful effects than pharmaceutical drugs, which are studied for their relative risks and benefits rather than for all imaginable dangers. In addition, toxic effects that are observed only at high dosages in short-term tests may also occur over long periods of time at much lower dosages. But once a drug is approved, a critical chance for turning up evidence during testing has vanished. Furthermore, the manufacturer gains a strong interest in controlling what consumers know about drugs.
In Glenmullen's analysis, regulatory agencies don't always do an adequate amount to help consumers either. He dedicated a chapter in his book to the FDA's choice to permit Lilly not to incorporate a word of warning with Prozac that the drug can cause or exacerbate suicidal symptoms--despite studies that indicated that up to 3.5 percent of patients may experience such effects. Add the marketing campaigns by the drug companies, he says, and you have a social climate in which "everyone wants a serotonin booster" and everyone believes in a "pharmacological fantasy" that we can use mood-altering drugs for an assortment of ills devoid of giving solemn thought to the impending danger.
Glenmullen offers a different Rx: less drugs and additional therapy. He believes numerous people taking serotonin-enhancing drugs would react as well to talk therapy. And talk isn't the only alternative. Aerobic exercise, such as jogging or dance, also combats less severe cases of depression. Studies in rats suggest that exercise boosts serotonin and neurogenesis as well.
Of course the use of any drug, in particular one that tinkers with the brain's equipment, involves peril, the full scope of which can't be identified until a large number of people have used it for many years. This known caution may take on a new importance when we grasp that research about serotonin enhancers still offers more questions than answers.
Reference: Mike Cohen, DISCOVER Vol. 22 No. 7 (July 2001)
As a potential consumer of Medical Hypnoanalysis, in a consumer beware environment, you might be interested in the following article exposing the various certifications in the field of hypnosis. If so click here.