Children’s and Teens’ Health: Self-hypnosis . . . a recent study of children with a certain congenital defect that requires yearly embarrasing and painful invasive procedures showed that children taught self-hypnosis were in less pain and their procedures went faster. Only one child had to be held down in the hypnosis group while five were physically restrained in the control group. While the results of the study are promising, there are some problems with it that need to be addressed for actual application. For instance, a number of kids were not told the reason they were going to the hospital which will certainly freak ’em out when they get there. Others were anxious as the parents repeatedly told them "the pain won’t be too much" which focuses on pain rather than on relaxation processes. Parents need to be up front and honest with their kids and teach them to focus on positive skills not avoidance strategies. Also, the induction patter used was an expensive two-hour session that made it unhelpful to poor patients who couldn’t afford it. For this sort of procedure, there are plenty of rapid hypnosis techniques for this sort of thing that doctors or technicians can use. See my other posts on rapid and instant inductions. Even changing the language of the procedure will be helpful. Children are highly responsive to suggestion, so let them take advantage of that skill. While in the whole the indications of the study results are promising, they are still limited in terms of scope and do not fully explore just how much of the potential for children and medical procedures hypnosis actually have.