Can Hypnosis Really Help With Depression?
Mental health is a core concept in our lives. Every year, approximately 1 in 14 adults in the U.S. experience clinically significant depression.
These rates are rising even further since the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s common to turn to medication for this, or sometimes nothing at all. Many people have asked us…
Can hypnosis help with my depression?
The term “depression” encompasses a lot. It is an umbrella term for the presence of a dysregulated mood. As a result, depression is a synonym for emotions that include either low mood, loss of interest or pleasure, or both.
Depression leads to a cascade of other challenges such as insomnia or hypersomnia, fatigue, lack of motivation or enjoyment, concentration difficulties, changes in appetite and weight, or even suicidal thoughts or behaviors.
Studies have shown that it affects young people and women significantly more than other individuals. It also comes with serious distress and a reduction of one’s normal life standard and quality.
Can hypnosis actually help?
Recent findings suggest that hypnosis is as an effective alternative approach for reducing depression as common treatments such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. These findings found that people who received hypnosis showed more reduction in depression than about 76% of those who received other treatments.
In a clinical hypnosis setting, suggestions are given by the provider to help the patient realize the change they want to see in their life. So the suggestions will vary based on the exact challenges the individual is facing.
Reveri is a self-hypnosis app with various exercises directed towards a specific goal or outcome. For example, managing stress and anxiety, or falling asleep easily. You can do the exercises anywhere to experience immediate improvement in how you’re feeling.
Dr. David Spiegel, Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and Reveri’s co-founder, facilitates focus and control sessions tailored to help you in challenging situations. You can choose the most helpful image during the exercise and experiment to discover what works best for you and the particular emotional discomfort you’re feeling. With the help of Dr. Spiegel’s soothing voice and knowledge stemming from decades of clinical research, you can tap into the powers of your brain and improve your mental health.
These hypnotic suggestions are particularly helpful in decreasing excessive focus on distress, and addressing helplessness and hopelessness as well. Moreover, hypnosis can be used to support the learning of new skills, a key aspect of all core treatments for depression. This also reduces the chance of future episodes of depression, because depression is associated with expecting negative outcomes, or the lack of positive outcomes, while hypnosis can be used to improve one’s outlook
Why is hypnosis a better alternative for depression?
Hypnosis is an effective method and a safer alternative compared to the common treatment of antidepressants.
More than 1 in 8 adults in the U.S. have used antidepressant medications in the past month. The likelihood of being prescribed an antidepressant and long-term usage is increasing. Long-term use of antidepressants has a wide range of side effects such as dry mouth, constipation, weight gain, and sexual dysfunction.
More importantly, the claims that antidepressants work by correcting a neurochemical imbalance in the brain are not scientifically proven.
However, there is reason to believe that depression might be particularly sensitive to hypnosis because both hypnosis and antidepressant medications work, in part, the same way: that is, “the individual’s expectation that the intervention will work”.
Hypnosis is safer than most medications and, as noted in The American Journal of Medicine, “if hypnosis were a drug, it would be standard of care.”
In Summary
Hypnosis is one of the most effective drug-free treatments for depression. It can be very helpful in reducing symptoms of depression, such as negative expectations and low energy.
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Many Reveri members experience the benefits of self-hypnosis after a single 10-minute session.
