Pilot: does clinical hypnosis training impart the confidence needed to use it?

The clinical hypnosis literature suggests that confidence in new clinical skills is an important learning outcome; however, many current training standards for clinical hypnosis do not address outcomes such as confidence. To address this deficit, this pilot study asked whether clinical hypnosis instruction offered by the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (ASCH) leads to learner confidence. A one-group observational A-B survey-based design examined baseline, expected, and post-training confidence in the use of skills necessary for clinical hypnosis. Twenty clinicians in attendance at an ASCH Fundamentals Workshop answered Likert-type questionnaire items immediately before and after clinical hypnosis training. The average change in confidence ratings from pre-training to post-training was +0.80, resulting in a significant effect, p = .022, suggesting that such workshops can lead to learner confidence. This work represents initial research on an affective learning objective in clinical hypnosis training, as well as the potential utility and relevance of affective learning objectives in such training. Future researchers may wish to further investigate and formalize this and other affective learning objectives in this discipline.

Incorporating Mental Health Into Lifestyle Medicine.

The evidence-based interconnection between mental health with lifestyle medicine practice is discussed. The extent to which physical health, and mental and behavioral health overlap are significant, and their interaction is seen in many ways. These bidirectional influences form a continuous thread through all lifestyle medicine pillars. The intersection of mental health and lifestyle should be considered and applied to provide optimal evidence-based lifestyle medicine for all patient populations who will benefit from the specific attention to diet, physical activity, relationships, stress, sleep, and substance use. Lifestyle medicine can be utilized to directly address and treat a range of mental health symptoms and disorders, and physical illnesses. In addition, behavior change skills and addressing the psychological factors contributing to barriers are crucial to helping patients reach their lifestyle medicine goals. Approaches to practice that attend to, and address, mental and behavioral health are relevant to and necessary for all types of providers who work within the lifestyle medicine framework.

Pilot Study of Subject Education and Oximetry as They Affect Comfort During Slow-Paced Breathing.

This study examined the effects of subject education and oximetry on discomfort sometimes associated with slow-paced breathing (dyspnea). This study was performed because some people report anxiety about getting sufficient oxygen while breathing slowly. Clinical experience suggested that reassuring subjects unaccustomed to slow-paced breathing that they are receiving enough oxygen may lead to greater comfort. The study had a sample size of 20 sequentially randomized healthy adults constituting two groups of 10 subjects. Both groups underwent 5 min of video-guided paced breathing at a rate of six breaths per minute. One group was able to view oximetry and hear an educational script, and the other received neither the educational script nor the viewable oximetry. Subjects answered a questionnaire about ease and adequacy of respiration as well as comfort. Analysis of the questionnaire showed that the group who received education about oximetry and viewed an oximeter during training felt significantly greater comfort during slow breathing than the conventional paced breathing group (p < 0.01). While further study is warranted, these preliminary findings suggest the potential need for this dyspneic effect to be taken into account in clinical practice as well as in research.