Is the 93%Hypnotherapy Success Rate True?

The 93% hypnotherapy success rate claim

The claim is that the hypnotherapy success rate is 93%, and with less sessions (namely 6) than compared with other behavioural therapies and psychotherapy, (Barrios, 1969).

Does this sound too good to be true?

In a word, yes.

Quoted often by many (a cursory Google search will spew out this figure with monotonous regularity) – 93% as a hypnotherapy success rate seems like a very high figure – so it would only be proper and a real professional need to examine this claim in more detail.

How did Barrios actually ‘conduct’ his research?

Remarkably, he didn’t. It was written from mainly documentary evidence pulled together and written from the 50s, summarised as long ago as 55 years ago in 1969, where he drew upon other main research from just 3 sources long before,

Namely (Richardson, 1963) regarding frigidity, (Munn, 1966) regarding asthma, insomnia alcoholism, anxiety, states and impotence, and (Hussain 1964) regarding alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, impotence, validity, sociopathic personality, disorder, hysterical reactions, and so on.

As you can see, all these research papers are very old and Barrios idoes not really give any details of this methodology in merely academically pulling together these 3 main (and other) research papers.

Barrios then, oddly proceeds to refer to work done by (Walt 1958), and rightly, raises a question-mark over the efficacy of psychoanalysis (e.g. Freudian) at time when it was just beginning to be questioned as not been particularly effective and behavioural therapy, which has come along way, of course since then. He goes onto conclude:

Averaging the above figures, we find that for psychoanalysis we can expect a recovery rate of 38% after approximately 600 sessions. For Wolpian therapy, we can expect a recovery rate of 72% after an average of 22 sessions, and for hypnotherapy we can expect a recovery rate of 93% after an average of 6 sessions.”

There isn’t any evidence or rationale for how Barrios calculated these statistics (and I also suspect that his percentage conclusions are drawn from the comparative nature of the effectiveness to each of the interventions).

Psycho-neurotic? What is that, exactly?

In referring to Walpe’s comparison of psycho-analysis, the client group was broadly based on psychoneurotic conditions, which is a term simply would not be meaningfully used now today, and would these days cover things such as it refers to a mental disorder and involves symptoms such as anxiety, distress, including repetitive behaviour, anger, not feeling control of your emotions. In other words, an extremely wide range of symptoms anybody would be forgiven for thinking that they are psycho-neurotic (!) (Thanks, Dr. Google, take a bow!) . This is a phrase that I believe is extremely unhelpful and the ultimate conclusion is that hypnotherapy is apparently 93% effective in these conditions – without Barrios going on define what ‘effectiveness’ actually means.

To summarise, Barrios’ 93% hypnotherapy success rate can be taken with a huge pinch of salt and should not be relied upon, by anyone, in the practise of modern hypnotherapy.

Yet, it is often quoted by those who need to promote hypnosis, of course. So where does this leave us with trying to establish what is an accurate indication of just how effective hypnotherapy can be?

So, is there anything we do we know what the real evidence base for indicating the true hypnotherapy success rate? Yes, there is, and it’s based on, to name but a few criteria.

• Most crucially, the condition or symptoms examined
• Their definitions
• Defining ‘improvement’ and/or success
• The date of publication
• The soundness of the methodologies used
• Who conducted it
• Whether it’s been peer reviewed

So, what is the true hypnotherapy success rate?

Thankfully, there is amore reliable more modern evidence out there for specific conditions and better conducted studies to find out the efficacy rate of therapy.

The table below goes to show an example of how we can get a more accurate picture of hypnotherapy success rates – based on more recent and reliable research, and i have added comments and other annotations to help you make more of an accurate informed decision. Even here though, there are 2 main caveats:

• Research evidence is still evolving and should be read with a ‘critical eye’, some of which I hope I’ve given you a heads up on there, and
• if you do your research, you’re more likely to be more informed that most of the hypnotherapists you approach

I hope this article serves to provide information for you to dispel the 93% myth that is often banded around the web, and unfortunately, by some professionals who at worst intentionally quote it, or, are mistaken about it’s origin and authenticity – who really should know better.

I hope as well, that the additional information on current lines of research on the efficacy of hypnotherapy my serve to help you make more of an informed decision (less) about if it’s going to work at all, but rather more crucially, your decision on who is going to do it, since I’ve a very strong professional hunch that who your hypnotherapist is has more bearing on the hypnotherapy success for you than any quoted statistic.

Research is ongoing

This blog post will be regularly updated and, if there’s any condition in particular you’d like me to inform you on based on the current level of the reliable research, just drop me a line.

References