Dear All
A while ago this question was posted "Does anyone work with or supply hypnotherapy services as part of their smoking cessation service, and if so on what grounds do you do this? Should hypnotherapists/acupuncturists recieve cessation training?" and I posted a brief answer on the evidence base for hypnotherapy for smokers: "Hypnotherapy and acupuncture should not be offered by the treatment services (using tax payers money) because there is no evidence that they are effective. You can find summaries of the effectiveness evidence at
www.treatobacco.net."
Today I received this (private) response: "Dear Martin, Please note: New Scientist vol 136 issue 1845 - Oct.1992, page 6: "Hypnosis is the most effective way of giving up smoking, according to the largest ever scientific comparison of ways of breaking the habit" - published in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Kind regards" There remains in the field a view that hypnosis is an effective treatment for smokers and so I do think it is important to periodically re-visit the evidence and to keep our clinical practice evidence based.
In the efficacy section of
www.treatobacco.net you will find the following key finding and commentary with links to the source reviews:
Key Finding Acupuncture and hypnotherapy have not been found to aid smoking cessation over and above any placebo effect. Commentary The small number of trials which have compared acupuncture to a ‘sham’ procedure have not shown any long term benefit. Some of the short term benefit of acupuncture may be due to the placebo effect combined with the counselling and support component. The same applies to hypnotherapy.
Abbot NC, Stead LF, White AR, et al. Hypnotherapy for smoking cessation (Cochrane Review) . Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2002; 1.
http://www.update-software.com/Abstracts/ab001008.htm
White AR, Rampes H, Ernst E. Acupuncture for smoking cessation (Cochrane Review) . Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2002; 1.
http://www.update-software.com/Abstracts/ab000009.htm
Fiore MC, Bailey WC, Cohen SJ, et al Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence. A Clinical Practice Guideline . Rockville, MD: US Department of Health and Human Services, 2000.
http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/tobacco/treating_tobacco_use.pdf A treatment should only be said to work if it gets positive results consistently, in trial after trial, so that 'maverick' results are ironed out so-to-speak. Of course clinical trials are not perfect - just the best method we have of assessing effectiveness - and they do not necessarily mean that one particular therapist might not be able to help a particular smoker on a particular occasion. However not enough is known still about which components of hyposis may be effective and how, and the effectiveness evidence remains weak. Therefore in terms o fthe overall evidence - collating results from many trials and many smokers - we still have to conclude that there is no consistent evidence that hypnotherapy helps smokers.
Martin Raw PhD
Deputy chair www.treatobacco.net
