Use of Hypnosis in the Treatment of Cancer Patients

Abstract

The case histories reported in this article e lore the use of hypnotherapy in conjunction with psychotherapy to am3iorate dixaseand treatment-related symptoms in 12 cancer patients. The reasons for patient referral,were nausea, vomiting, anxiety, depression, anorexia, and pain. Hypnotherapy included standard trance induction, total body relaxation, visualization, and the use of hypnotic suggestion to facilitate removal of noxious symptoms. Treatment in the presence of the therapist was augmented in five cases by the use of specially prepared tapes for self-hypnosis. The mean number of psychotherapy sessions was nine, and the mean number of hypnothera y sessions was four. Nine of the 12 atients received hypnotherapy ecause psychotherapy and other modalities had failed to relieve their symptoms. The other 3 patients received it for relief of symptoms and supportive therapy. Most of the patients were terminally ill died within our months of starting hypnotherapy. Despite these problems, hypnotherapy was successful in relieving symptoms in 8 of the 12 patients. The author concludes that the physician should consider hypnosls as an important adjuvant therapy for medically ill patients. In particular, hypnotherapy even when limited to a few sessions can be efficacious when dealing with terminally ill patients.