schizophrenia.

[Unregistered]

can hypnosis help a schizophrenic return back to normal?

or treat someone with the fear of being schizophrenic?

or treat someone with some of the symptoms of schizophrenia?

[pinktrance]

I have been taught that you should never work with someone with schitzophrenia, it can make symptoms worse for the sufferer. I think doctors and people trained in mental illness are best suited to helping people with schitzophrenia. If you have some symptoms of schitzophrenia you should go to see your doctor, it my be nothing, but the doctor should be the first port of call.

i wish you well
pinky

[Unregistered]

yeah, ive heard some horror stories about schizophenics and hypnosis. DONT TRY IT UNLESS YOUR A PROFESSIONAL! its potentially very interesting. and, i believe, the results could be very positive, but only if you REALLY know what your doing.
in my opinion, schizophrenia is a disorder that comes from the inability to "deal" with past trauma. hypnosis could be a helpful tool in bring these memories up and gently resolving them. but time heals all wounds and is the best way to cure this disease.

[Merlin]

Yes
Yes
Yes

[Merlin]

As I and others have stated before, you should know what you're doing and if you are not an MD, then work with one.

[Merlin]

Hi pinktrance,

like any other situation, if you don't know what you're doing, don't do it! :)

[pinktrance]

merlin, have you thought about auditioning for a part on "when harry met sally"?


quote: "yes"
"yes"
"yes"

:eek:

[Merlin]

>have you thought about auditioning for a part on "when harry met sally"?

What is that?

[Jack]

Hello,

Hypnotherapy should be an ideal choice for schizophrenia treatment simply because a good practitioner can separate assumed or real personalities and persuade them to do something useful, more useful, that is, than insanity. Then integration is possible.

In practice hypnotherapy is no more successful than other interventions and in the hands of the unskilled can compound the problem.

The reasons why hypnotherapy or anything else fail so miserably may be that schizophrenia is hard wired. That would explain why drugs can control the condition but little seems able to eliminate it. A good, and normally rational friend of mine explained that in schizophrenics the soul had left the body and God had therefore lost interest. On balance I prefer the former explanation, but the jury is still out on the causes of the condition and until some light can be shed it is not a condition that hypnotherapists should undertake to treat except under the aegis of a medic, if only for the legal complications which might follow.

I do not agree that time heals schizophrenia, in fact in my experience the condition becomes worse over time.

Jack

[Neurotic1]

Hi Jack

I would tend to agree to some extent with what you said. However, I was slightly confused over you statement below;

Hypnotherapy should be an ideal choice for schizophrenia treatment simply because a good practitioner can separate assumed or real personalities and persuade them to do something useful, more useful, that is, than insanity. Then integration is possible.
In schizophrenia, people tend to hear voices and/or are plagued by intrusive thoughts which they can find very distressing - hence they can appear to change temperament to extremes and in an instant. They do not have multiple separate personalities and hence are not dissociated into multiple parts although there is usually a strong dissociative element present in schizophrenia.

More than one separate personality or identity would be indicative of multiple personality disorder which is highly dissociative. I would be interested to know the opinions of people with experience of treating MPD with hypnotherapy.

I suspect that you are correct that hypnotherapy could be useful in schizophrenia although I feel it is very dangerous territory without the involvement of medics. It also might be dependant on the severity of the schizophrenia.

[Jack]

Hello Neurotic,

In my experience of schizophrenia and other dissociative conditions like MPD the heard voices are usually (not always) personality voices and are usually (not always) multiple. There does seem to be a close correlation between MPD and schizophrenia with sufferers of MPD experiencing many of the delusional aspects of schizophrenia and schizophrenics experiencing some of the heavily dissociated aspects of MPD.

I have only helped to treat 4 diagnosed schizophrenics as an hypnotherapist and all four were borderline MPD. In three of the cases more than two 'voices' or personalities were present and in one case eight distinct personalities. All of them exhibited paranoid or delusional behaviour, two had severe cognitive organisational problems and one was also diagnosed as ADHD.

However, I take your point that schizophrenia is not in a precise sense MPD, but current thinking sees it on a continuum of disorders rather than as a separate and strrictly delineated disorder, which echoes my own experience.

There's an article at http://www.apa.org/releases/schizophrenia.html which you might find interesting.

Jack

[sunmile]

jack,
in schizophrenics the soul had left the body and God had therefore lost interest.i dont think thats a very postitive or even relevent thing to even mention to a person enquiring about schizophrenia. it sounds like a quote from the dark ages! are thier brains made out of wood too? dont spread ignorant thoughts to troubled people. or to anyone else for that matter. i imagine that its hard enough dealing with this "disorder" without your repugnance.

[skip]

Sunmile,

While I agree with you that the thought is both dark ages and repugnant, I can hardly hold Jack responsible for it.

If you had read Jack's post carefully, you would be able to discern that Jack clearly stated that it was a friend of his that said, "in schizophrenics the soul had left the body.....", and further that Jack himself didnt hold with that opinion.

I think it is not at all productive in any way to spread the idea that Jack is of that opinion.

You might be interested to know that energy healers percieve (see) a hole in a schizophrenics energy field. Some speculate that this 'hole' allows "other entities" entrance, and 'explains' the 'other personalities and or voices'. Now I dont believe that, except that I do know they do see a hole, that other people dont have, because I have had diagnosed schizophrenics, seen by energy healers who know nothing of the diagnosis, and they all have reported the hole.

I suspect that perhaps it serves as a metaphor (however weak) for what is going on. With this in mind I read what Jacks friend said, and I didnt have the same reaction. In fact I thought it a metaphor that showed some remarkable similarities to the energy healers metaphor. Curious eh?

In addition to that, in the Shamanic tradition, schizophrenia is a gift, a blessing to be desired, if you will. Because it is a 'direct connection to the spirit world'.

An additional metaphor, to be sure, but one with out any stigma, in fact something to be sought after.

skip

[Merlin]

Hello Sunmile,

>>A good, and normally rational friend of mine explained that in schizophrenics the soul had left the body and God had therefore lost interest.

>i dont think thats a very postitive or even relevent thing to even mention to a person enquiring about schizophrenia.

>A good, and normally rational friend of mine explained

I think cutting out the beginning of that sentence does Jack a disservice. I don't get that as his intended meaning.

I also would prefer to use another model for working with schizophrenia.
OTOH, if the model works for someone, I would not discourage their using it.

[Don]

For a brief look at MPD [note, it it technically called DID--Dissociative Identity Disorder--today] vs. schizophrenia from the point of view of someone claiming to suffer from MPD, see http://www.wermany.org/reading/faq.htm .I should point out that this is from a person seeking to understand, self-justify, and overcome a perceived problem. Therefore--as many people in a similar position might do--the information comes from a position of seeking proof, not truth.

Of more interest to me concerns the claims of the prevalence of DID. Before the publication of the book, The Three Faces of Eve, there were less than ten confirmed cases of DID in the entire corpus of psychological literature. After the book was published, this number slowly increased. But the big change came with the publication of Michelle Remembers which linked DID not to child abuse (as modern researchers do), but to satanic child abuse. Almost immediately a huge number of people were reporting the symptoms of Michelle, including some that were so wacky that psychological researchers and professionals eventually discounted it. After ruining thousands of lives and families (along with the destructive book, Courage to Heal), the satanic attachment to the cause of DID has greatly diminished. Even so, a semi-underground network of religious fundamentalists, nurses, and even police officers persist in maintaining this fantasy.

Still, from all the evidence I've seen, DID is not as common as many people would claim (estimates of DID from supporters range from 2,000,000 in the U.S. to 90% of the population!! [ http://www.users.qwest.net/~csander/MPD.html ]). Often there are other motivations for imitating (my guess is usually at an unconscious level) DID, ranging from desire for attention to an unconscious part wanting to communicate.

I don't think that we as hypnotherapists meed to worry about classical psychological definitions or diagnoses. Rather, we can look at the symptomology and deal with a client on that level.

In many, if not most cases, diagnosable schizophrenia has to do with an imbalance of chemicals in the brain. Working with an MD, helping a client to recognize the effects of the imbalance and correct the imabalance without meds should be possible. For DID a modified form of Parts Therapy should help. I should point out, however, that this is a systemological approach and not a client-centered approach. Each client may need something different, and modifing or abandoning systems to meet the needs of the client are, IMO, paramount.

http://www.altor.org/0900-99/a0940.htm
"The studies in this field [treating schizophrenia with hypnotherapy] are few, small, poorly reported and outdated. Hypnosis could be helpful for people with schizophrenia but to ascertain this requires better designed, conducted and reported randomised studies."

[Neurotic1]

Hi Jack

Yes I agree they seem to be very similar conditions in many senses.

[Jack]

Hello Sunmile,

If I had said what you said I said then indeed you would be right to slate me.
Since I did not you are not. If English isn't your first language then your mistake is understandable. If it is then I can only suggest you pursue more reading practice.

As for 'repugnance', well having spent over 30 years treating people with a wide variety of conditions, some of which society might see as 'repugnant', I find that very few, if any of the problems with which human beings are assailed repugnant to me, being usually the result of factors over which they have had and have no control or volition. Schizophrenia is one such of many, many others.

I don't find your remarks offensive, just irrational.

Jack

[sunmile]

If I had said what you said I said then indeed you would be right to slate me.jack,
if you would apply the same analysis that has been given to your previous post, and examine my previous post, you would see that i never, to put it in terms of a fourth-grader "said what you said i said". the depth in my statement was to point out the carelessness of your qoute, whether it came out of your or your "good and normally rational" friends mouth first. there was no reason to offer a demeaning opinion to a person who, has quite possibly, come to this message board looking for help. i hope that you dont offer the same uplifting statements to your own "patients". that, in my opinion, might be very 'repugnant'.

[skip]

sunmile,

Can I interject some speculation here, amongst all the rest of this speculation?

I can completely agree with your first assessment, if it had been Jack's opinion.

AND I can completely agree with your second assessment, 'that it is outrageous carelessness', if it is indeed carelessness on Jack's part.

Maybe it is fortunate those arent the only possibilities.

There is a thing called "innoculation", where you bring up the 'terrible thing' in adance, so that you can more control the response, and you can put your spin on it, if you will. Political campaigns are great labratories for observing this, and Bill Clinton's handlers, were the consumate masters at it.

There is also the behavior referred to as "ignoring the elephant". It is similar to innoculation, but not exactly the same. It is carefully tip-toeing around something profoundly apparent, to the detrement of your client. Imagine having high tea, with an elephant in the room, and everyone, carefully ignoring it.

Now is it possible that Jack, felt a need to bring out this "awful, hurtful, belief", in order to deal with it openly, and not have the elephant lurking?

I think it is possible.

Is it possible that Jack, wanted to innoculate, and make sure he brought up something that might come up down the road, so the person already had the benefit of time to adjust to having heard it, and some countering beliefs installed to soften it?

I think it is possible.

I dont know for sure, and sadly neither do you.

I havent asked Jack why he brought it up, neither have you.

You may be right, Jack, may have had malicious intent, or Jack may have simply been careless. Reading his previous posts on this, and other subjects, doesnt lead me to conclude either is the case.

But I most certainly cant conclude I am right about Jack's intent, I havent asked him.

I know I have been personally chastized, sometimes even vilified, on lists, by well meaning people, who simply didnt understand what was going on, for bringing up "the elephant". I remember one specific time, where the people who were trying to help the person, actually turned into enablers, without their realizing it, and ensured that the individual didnt confront her real issue.

I remember once on this list I "brought up the elephant", some people realized it, a couple didnt. The two that didnt began to 'defend' the person, and felt like I was a callous so and so. One of them wrote me off list to ask what I thought I was doing. When I explained to her, my intent, she saw the positive purpose and changed her mind about me. She and I are good friends even tho she doesnt post here any more. The other one didnt bother to ask, and her mind about me remains the same.

Sunmile, you seem to be smart, and caring, and you can express yourself well, AND you seem to have positive contributions to make. And you DO have a very valid point, that some beliefs are dangerous, and careful handling of them is paramount. And everyone can certainly agree with you, on that!

So before this thread degenerates into something less than a good discussion about hypnosis and schizophrenia, would you mind considering how it is, that you can be so sure, about Jack's intent, not having asked either?

skip

[Jack]

Sunmile,

Skip has made has made some very good points in his usual perceptive way and I suggest that you read them and try to understand them.

As I understand your remarks you are questioning the content of what I said, the 'careless ' way in which you believe I said it, and the veracity of the source of the statement.

Regarding the latter: a normally rational good friend of mine did make that statement, it was not, as you imply, a statement made by me. Now, you may believe that or not, it is up to you.

Whether or not I should have mentioned this example of a particular type of conclusion about the causes of schizophrenia is again a matter of opinion. As a therapist I do not mention examples or metaphors without a reason. There was no 'carelessness' in this. Skip has made the point perfectly well in his post without my reiteration.

As for the content, well I believe I made it clear that the belief expressed was not my own. But, because it was not my own does not make it any less valid as a belief.

Now you have made a value judgement about that belief by calling it 'demeaning'. Playing Devil's Advocate for a moment; how do you know the statement is not true? Are you the world's leading expert on schizophrenia? Do you know the causes of this condition? Do you suffer from schizophrenia? If you do not then how can you suggest that any belief is 'demeaning'? Or perhaps other beliefs than your own are 'demeaning'? How do you know it was 'demeaning' to the original poster? I would invite you to check all or any of my previous posts and see if any of my replies to people requesting help are what you call 'demeaning'. I cannot think of one experienced member of this board who has ever replied in that vein, and it has not happened now, except in your perception.

My belief is that my friend's statement is not true. I don't know that it is not true. I just believe that it is not true. There is a difference - as I'm sure any 'fourth grader':) would know. If you had read my original post you would see that as fact. My reasons for mentioning it were not based on whether it was true or not, or whether it would offend your sensibilities.

Having said all that, I do understand why you took umbridge, but help for people posting on this board does not always consist of offering platitudes or 'uplifting' statements. With personality disorders in particular both can be negative in effect. If you are a therapist you should know that. If you are not a therapist then you may learn that, rather than indulging in emotional outbursts based upon a lack of understanding.

Jack