This series has covered more than eighty topics, from IBS to instant inductions. This post pulls the clinical evidence together into one place. If you read only one article, this is the one.
The ranking reflects the research described in the individual posts. Each condition is discussed more fully elsewhere in the series.
Tier 1: Well supported
These have multiple randomised trials, reviews, and in several cases the backing of clinical guidelines or professional bodies.
Pain
The most studied use. A meta-analysis of 85 experimental trials found meaningful pain relief, with reductions of about 42 per cent in highly suggestible people and 29 per cent in those of medium suggestibility. Clinical trials support it for chronic low back pain, headaches and migraines, jaw pain, fibromyalgia, and pain from nerve damage.
Pain and anxiety during medical procedures
A Lancet trial of 241 patients found less pain, less medication, greater stability and shorter procedures. Trials in breast surgery found less anaesthetic, pain, nausea and fatigue. Supported in burn wound care and in children’s procedures.
Irritable bowel syndrome
Gut-directed hypnotherapy has many trials, benefits lasting five years or more, and recognition in UK guidance for IBS that has not responded to other treatment.
Menopausal hot flushes
Trials found reductions of about 70 per cent, and the Menopause Society gives clinical hypnosis its highest level of recommendation among non-hormonal treatments.
Tier 2: Promising
Supported by trials, but fewer, smaller, or with less consistent results.
- Anxiety, especially alongside cognitive behavioural therapy
- Symptoms during cancer treatment: fatigue, nausea, distress
- Sleep: a little over half of studies in one review found benefit
- Depression, as part of treatment by a qualified clinician
- Children’s tummy pain and IBS, including by home recordings
- Other gut conditions: functional dyspepsia, non-cardiac chest pain, keeping ulcerative colitis in remission
- Sleepwalking and sleep terrors
- Exam and performance anxiety
- Habit cough in children
- Stress, including mindful hypnotherapy
Tier 3: Limited or mixed
Small studies, uncontrolled reports, or results that conflict.
- Labour: may reduce some pain medication and make birth less frightening; no difference in epidurals
- Dental anxiety: often helpful, results inconsistent
- Phobias, including fear of flying
- Skin conditions: warts, eczema, psoriasis
- Tics and Tourette syndrome
- Trauma, only in support of established trauma therapy
- Bedwetting
- Pregnancy sickness
- High blood pressure
- Sexual difficulties linked to anxiety
- Wound and fracture healing
- Sport performance
Tier 4: Unproven
Not shown to work as a treatment. May help as an addition to proven methods.
- Stopping smoking: a Cochrane review found insufficient evidence
- Weight loss: at most a small enhancement of behavioural programmes
- Alcohol problems
- Tinnitus
- Asthma itself
- Procrastination
- “Boosting the immune system”
- Ultra Depth, the Simpson Protocol and similar deep-state methods: no published trials
Tier 5: Do not use it for this
- Recovering memories. Hypnosis increases confidence, not accuracy, and can create false memories.
- Past-life regression as therapy.
- Curing cancer, infection or other physical disease.
- Replacing medical treatment, medication or anaesthesia.
- Finding out “what really happened” in any legal or personal matter.
The patterns
Looking across the whole picture, some things stand out.
It works best on experience, not disease. Pain, nausea, anxiety, flushes, gut sensations. Hypnosis changes how the body’s signals are processed and felt.
It works best as an addition. With CBT, with pain education, with medication, with standard care.
People differ. Hypnotizability is a stable trait. Highly responsive people get much more from it, particularly for pain.
Practice matters. Self-hypnosis and recordings between sessions were part of most successful trials.
It need not take long. Two sessions with recordings matched eight for back pain. Fifteen minutes before surgery made a difference.
The safest uses are the best supported. The riskiest uses, memory work and regression, are the ones with no support.
Who delivers it matters. Many of the best results come from health professionals in specialist settings.
A simple decision guide
- Get a diagnosis first. Do not use hypnosis on a symptom nobody has assessed.
- Check the tier. Is there real evidence for your problem?
- Use the proven treatment too. Hypnosis alongside, not instead.
- Choose a qualified practitioner, ideally a health professional, with no promises of a cure.
- Practise. Ten minutes a day.
- Give it a fair trial, then judge by whether your daily life has changed.
- If it is not helping, stop and try something else. It does not work for everyone.
A note on these rankings
This is a general reader’s summary, based on reviews and trials described in the individual posts, many of which were checked against abstracts and summaries and not the full papers. Research moves on, and guidelines differ between countries. Use it as a starting point for a conversation with a health professional, not as a final verdict.
The bottom line
Hypnosis is a real, safe and useful tool for a specific set of problems: pain above all, then gut symptoms, procedure anxiety and hot flushes. It is promising for several more, and unproven or unsuitable for the rest. Knowing which is which is most of what you need.
Next in the series: Franz Mesmer: The Man Who Mesmerised Europe
This article is for general information and is not medical advice.