Psychosis is
a mental health illness that distorts the senses, making the ill person lose
touch with reality. It is a continuum of anxiety and depression and affects
approximately 4% of people at some point in their lives. They are often unaware
that they have a problem. Hypnotherapy can help by effectively treating
excessive stress and depression before it spills into psychosis.
Schizophrenia and Bi-polar disorder are both Psychotic disorders.
Signs of
psychosis are –
- Changes in mood and thinking to
abnormal ideas which makes it hard to understand how the person feels.
- Confused thinking, everyday
thoughts don’t join up properly, sentences don’t make sense, there may be
difficulty concentrating or remembering.
- False beliefs or delusions.
- Hallucinations, seeing, hearing,
feeling, smelling or tasting things that isn’t there.
- Changed feelings, mood swings,
more excited or depressed than usual.
- Changed behaviour, extremely lethargic
or active. They may become angry or upset without a cause.
Neurosis is a
term referring to mental balances that cause distress but don’t affect normal
thoughts or activities. Neurosis takes the form of depression, anxiety, panic
attacks and OCD.
The
hypnotherapist’s role working with neurosis is to relax the mind and focus
neuronal activity towards higher cortical regions of the brain where creative
and solution based thinking occur, reducing stress responses of anger, anxiety
and depression in the limbic region.
Legally and
professionally, the hypnotherapist wouldn’t treat clients with psychotic disorders due to
their poor grip on reality. These clients should be referred to their GP for psychiatric
referral. If however, the hypnotherapist had specialist training whereby they
could use metaphorical language to encourage left hemisphere activity in order
to reduce anxiety levels with calming metaphors, then treatment could commence.
The human
givens perspective on treating psychosis is that should a client have a strong
emotional support system and solid connection to reality by daily creative
tasks such as gardening or cooking, they recover quicker than those without.
This theory is backed up by research of 3rd world countries. A technique
used, provided clients aren’t in a
psychotic episode is to help them dip out of the dreamlike state into the
analytical brain by the type of questions asked and talking about their concerns,
connecting with their metaphors and attempting to change the meanings these
have for them. This helps them understand what’s happening so they can spend
more time in normal waking reality.
Karen Taylor Hypnotherapy
No comments:
Post a Comment