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.
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'.
