Hypnotherapy can be of great help to psoriasis
patients, according to a new report.
Psoriasis is chronic relapsing skin disease which
may be triggered by a number of factors, including trauma, infections and
most notably emotional stress. For this reason, researchers at the
Department of Dermatology, The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
Baltimore, USA carried out a three month study into the use of
hypnotherapy in adults suffering with stable, chronic, plaque-type
psoriasis.
Five patients received an active suggestion
technique in which positive statements relating specifically to the
patient's skin are given , and six patients received a neutral hypnosis
technique in which there is no mention of the disease.
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The researchers found that the highly
hypnotisable patients received far greater benefit than those who were
only moderately hypnotisable. Although this was only a small scale study,
it suggests that hypnotherapy may be a useful therapeutic treatment for
those patients diagnosed with psoriasis who are highly hypnotisable.
However, more comprehensive research on a much larger scale is needed, not
only to discover the mechanisms and degrees of healing for psoriasis
patients, but also to establish which patients are 'highly hypnotisable'.