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HYPNOSIS IN THE NEWS
Hypnosis for dental work
NEWS24 2010-08-23 13:29
Stuttgart - Many people dread dentist visits and feel a shiver go down their spine just thinking about the sound of the drill. They are afraid of pain and insist on anaesthesia, which often has unpleasant side effects such as a swollen cheek and strong pain afterward.
Some patients cannot tolerate the anaesthetic. Dental treatment under hypnosis is a possible alternative in such cases.
A fearful patient unconsciously transmits his or her tension to the dentist, senses the dentist's growing tension and reacts by becoming even more tense, according to the German Society of Dental Hypnosis (DGZH). The result, it said, is a vicious circle detrimental to the patient, the dentist and the treatment itself.
There are patients with a pronounced dental phobia, a hypersensitive gag reflex or an allergy to local anaesthetics. Often they can be treated only under general anaesthesia, the DGZH said. Or they can allow themselves to be hypnotised.
As the DGZH describes it, the aim of dental hypnosis is to put the patient in a relaxed "trance state" for the procedure.
Shutdown
"It's a state of relaxation in which the patient's attention isn't directed outward, but rather inward - the patient shuts down a little, as it were," noted Stephan Eitner, a dentist and president of the German Society of Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy (DGH).
In this relaxed state, he said, external perception is "switched off".
The patient blocks out unpleasant sensations during the dental procedure and feels good, which the DGZH said manifested itself physically in a calm heart rate, low blood pressure, deep abdominal respiration and relaxed muscles.
The hypnotic state can be achieved by suggestion, induced relaxation -with the help of hypnosis CDs underlaid with relaxing music, for example - as well as by distraction, the DGZH said.
"Concentration is the first thing we do," Eitner remarked. The dentist speaks with the patient in a way that diverts the patient's thoughts from anxieties and focuses them inward, he said, comparing the mental state with "daydreaming".
Eitner said fears of suddenly awakening from hypnosis during the dental procedure and feeling intense pain were groundless.
"We work with a 'net' and 'double bottom'," he said. To be on the safe side, he explained, hypnotised patients are also given a local anaesthetic if they tolerate it. Thanks to the hypnosis, they need only about a quarter of the usual dosage to feel no pain, he said.
Unpredictable
Eitner said dental hypnosis was not performed on "patients with a history of mental illness". People who either are or were in psychotherapy are unacceptable, he said, because their behaviour under hypnosis is unpredictable.
Georg Duenzl, a dentist and executive board member of the Munich- based Milton Erickson Society for Clinical Hypnosis (MEG), said interest in hypnosis treatments was generally high, although there are no precise figures for Germany.
Duenzl said he personally performed one or two formal hypnosis treatments a week in his own dental practice. But he added that he employed elements of hypnosis in every treatment - by calming his patients and trying to get them to picture relaxing images.
- SAPA
Forensic Hypnosis: A Tool of the Trade
By Camaron Abundes
NewsWest 9
MIDLAND CO.-It's a technique you might expect at a spa, not the local jail house, but for more than 20 years Sheriff Gary Painter says forensic hypnosis is a tool used to solve crimes.
"It's a very good tool," Captain Rory Mckinney, who took the course in Huntsville last month, said. "There are a lot of things people see and don't remember."
McKinney is now one of three in the Midland County Sheriff's Office, licensed to perform investigative hypnosis.
"Hypnosis works, there is no doubt in my mind hypnosis works, but it only works if that individual will let it," Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter, said.
Painter says the technique is used to illicit information in a criminal case when witnesses or crime victims can't remember details of a crime due to shock.
"Homicides, robberies, rapes, anything where there has been a traumatic experience there is a chance there can be some evidence recovered or memory brought back that would assist in the investigation," Painter said.
Sheriff Painter says a landmark appeal case back in the 1980's outlined the guidelines used today. Sheriff Painter says since he became licensed back in 1987, he has gone through annual training.
"It was something that was coming along in the state of Texas that I want to be a part of," Sheriff Painter said.
He brought it to West Texas as yet another avenue to investigate.
Sheriff Painter once served as President of the Texas Association for Investigative Hypnotists, a non-profit organization dedicated to continuing education on the topic.
During a session, the investigator must record the process and know nothing about the case.
"You just talk to an individual and you just guide them through the hypnosis, you take them to a deep state of relaxation," Sheriff Painter said.
HypnoBirthing: No Swinging Watch or Pain ABC News
HypnoBirthing: No Swinging Watch or Pain ABC News
Jessica Alba, Pamela Anderson Chose Mind of Matter to Create Calm Labor and Birth
"Most women were totally anesthetized and out cold, and their babies were taken from them with forceps, except for the very few who didn't make it to the hospital and had them by the side of the road," said Mongan, now 77.
So Mongan, then a young New Hampshire English teacher, devised her own way to circumvent the system when she had her four children in the late 1950s and 1960s.
She practiced a form of self-hypnosis, relaxing and imagining a calm birth, one that was painless.
Today, the her method has a registered trademark -- HypnoBirthing -- and women in 34 countries, including celebrity mothers like Jessica Alba, Giselle Bundschen, Pamela Anderson, and "ER's" Noah Wyle's wife Tracy, have learned how to put mind over matter.
"We use hypnosis for all sorts of things," she said. "But it has kind of a PR issue and a bad identity with a lot of misperceptions around someone controlling the mind. But once patients and physicians are given accurate information and they work hand in hand, these are very powerful approaches."
Between October 2005 and January 2008, 1,059 parent birth reports were sent to the HypnoBirthing Institute, which was founded by Mongan. Of these, 806 were from United States.
"There's a calmness and not as much fuss," said Mongan. "That's the way babies are meant to come into the world."
No one held a swinging pocket watch above Mongan or her younger protégés -- rather they used deep relaxation, breathing and self-hypnosis techniques to make labor and childbirth a serene event.
The laboring woman is told not to push, thereby tensing muscles, but to "breathe down the baby," working with her own body's contractions.
"I always believed that it didn't make sense that it had to be painful," said Mongan. "It's a physiological law that all muscles in the body work unless there is something wrong. What could be wrong with procreation of the species?"
What first gave her the idea that the brain could control the birthing process was when she was a child, watching a stray cat in the midst of labor.
"A dog came into the yard and the cat's labor shut down," said Mongan. "She took the two babies and ran away and then took the others and ran away. Then she had two more."
Hypnotherapist Grandfather Helped Birth
Katie Drake, a 27-year-old singer from Ocala, Fla., is familiar with the power of the mind. Her grandfather, a hypnotherapist who works with the terminally ill to ease their chronic pain, prepared her for the birth of her now 15-year-old son with a tape and visualization techniques.
At its worst, labor pains were like a "bad period," she said.
Due in September with her second child, Drake is being trained by Mongan. One of the exercises has the woman imagine each color of rainbow and associate it with relaxing different parts of the body.
Drake relaxes so much that she doesn't remember the middle portion of Mongan's tape.
"It's not a magic pill," Drake said. "You have to decide early in your pregnancy and start working out like a marathon for the brain."
"It's not so much to escape your birth and go into la, la land, but to deeply connect with what your body is doing," she said. "You need to offset the awake-alert state you are in."
For this baby, she is looking forward to the involvement of her husband, who will also train in using key comfort words or touching "anchors" and light massage to help Drake trigger her own pain-killing endorphins.
The father is seen more as a "birth companion, not a coach," according to Mongan. "It's not an athletic event."
Because the process is so calming, with soft lighting and music, babies are often delivered more quickly, according to Mongan.
One Florida woman labored so quickly, she birthed alone before help arrived.
"She realized the baby was right there," said Mongan. "She calmly brought it into the world and shortly thereafter the midwife arrived. It just shows you how natural birthing can be."
Mongan's own children, now grown, were born with a "minimum of pain." The first labor took two and a half hours, the next was two, then 90 minutes and the last in under one hour.
"I went through until the baby was crowning and I had to tell [the medical team] I was ready," she said. "They didn't believe I was doing everything because I wasn't screaming and carrying on."
Later, after getting a master's degree in counseling, she added self-hypnosis to the technique.
"It was the same euphoric experience when I was birthing, but I didn't know what it was," she said. "For me it was blind faith."
Her daughter, Maura Geddes was her first HypnoBirthing patient in 1990.
The Concord, N.H., hospital was so impressed that they wanted to learn more about how Geddes had controlled her own pain. They eventually offered classes on the technique.
"Early on from the time my water broke, I knew to relax and breathe," said Geddes, now 50 of Bow, N.H. "I had my son very fast -- five hours from the time the water broke."
A doctor from the nearby Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center watched the process and was "amazed," according to Geddes.
The breathing differs from other natural childbirth techniques. 'It's more like medication and you are in such a relaxed state you can go almost limp," said Mongan.
In 1992, Mongan self-published her book, "HypnoBirthing: Taking the Birthing World By Calm," which was later changed to "The Mongan Method." Today, it is printed in several languages.
When a C-Section is Required
HypnoBirthing works hand in hand with conventional medicine.
Susan Parr, a mother of two from South Portland, Maine, and a professional counselor, tried HypnoBirthing with her second daughter, who is now 8.
"After having a planned c-section with my first child, who was breech, I was really determined to experience labor and delivery in a positive way," said Parr, who is 44. "I was really disappointed about not being able to experience labor the first time -- -it felt so cold and sterile."
"After being completely pain free, I lost my ability to focus and felt the strong contractions for the first time -- very, very painful," said Parr. But she still credits the method with her "healthy, beautiful 9-pounder."
"She is a totally easygoing, loving, caring, peaceful and sweet little girl," she said. "I think HypnoBirthing helped with this." Mongan advises expectant mothers to choose care providers who are "supportive, but not an interventionist," be it a doctor or midwife. "It's important they are in sync with the philosophy of the birth."
Even though women like Susan Parr ended up with a C-section, Mongan says not to worry. Only 16 percent of HypnoBirthers undergo that procedure, compared to the national average of 33 percent.
"Just say, 'I will accept whatever turn my labor takes," she said. "We are not opposed to intervention, but unnecessary intervention."
"About 70 percent of our women who birth do it naturally, without medication," said Mongan, who is also not opposed to using painkillers, if a woman wants them.
"We believe that women need to reclaim their birth in whatever way they choose," she said. "The last thing we want to see is a woman biting her lip."
