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Endo_Nurse Article

Guided Clinical Hypnotherapy in the Treatment of Children's IBS

Michael Mahoney, MDH, thp   EndoNurse Magazine   February/March 2009  p. 32.

01/27/2009
 
Editor’s note: Mahoney claims that research and patient trials regarding his Ongoing Progressive Session Induction Method (OPSIM) have shown success rates of 85 percent to 95 percent in the reduction of IBS symptoms. His hypnotherapy practice sponsored the UK’s first IBS Awareness evening at Liverpool University in 1997.
 
As a forward-thinking medical professional, perhaps you have at times become frustrated with patients who don’t get better even though all the procedures and treatments have been given. As a clinical hypnotherapist working with children and adult patients who have gastrointestinal disorders such as IBS, functional abdominal pain (FAP), and Crohn’s, I have seen first-hand how the brain-gut connection can be an integral part of the condition itself.
 
Guided imagery and clinical hypnotherapy addresses the brain-gut connection in IBS and FAP and has been established as a well-researched method for over 20 years.
 
Certainly in your daily rounds, you have evaluated children who are presenting with mild to severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, constipation, or a combination of both. Extensive medical evaluations and colonoscopies reveal nothing, so it is diagnosed as a functional disorder. From there, pain medications, antispasmodics, diet, fiber, exercise and similar suggestions are made.
 
As a caring professional, you may have watched this scenario unfold in the examination room — the fearful child subjected to an invasive examination — and you know most likely the outcome will be a functional motility disorder with about 20 percent of these little ones.
 
Often, parents come to me after all treatment avenues have been exhausted. By this point, a feeling of hopelessness has prevailed as the child falls into a familiar pattern of pain and refuses to go to school or take an active part in life.
 
Guided imagery is a means to break that mind-gut connection, where the child uses his or her subconscious mind to disconnect ingrained thought patterns. I explain that the brain and the “tummy” don’t always speak well to each other. Worry about such things as the constant need for the bathroom, about school, about pain, and so on, becomes so much a part of their thought pattern that it becomes a part of who they are and is manifested in their symptoms and subsequent responses.
 
But the child was not born this way, nor did they always have these difficulties, and so they can be replaced and relearned. I have found time and again that these little ones are great learners, eager to get better, and really want to take part in their sessions.
Every single child has shown remarkable improvement in their overall happiness and quality of life in addition to symptom reduction. They are able to return to school, and effectively use their imagery sessions when needed to reduce or eliminate their “tummy” troubles and pain.
 
After seeing many children progress over the years, a formal clinical trial project was developed to confirm and quantify the hypnotherapeutic protocols effective in the clinical setting, and to provide this therapy to the community via recorded sessions and instructional information. The IBS Audio Program 60® for Children was borne out of the increasingly greater numbers of children diagnosed with FAP and IBS who were visiting my practice.
 
Until now, children presenting with functional or recurrent abdominal pain and IBS would have a very limited availability of this treatment modality.

 
Following upon the successful completion of feedback, the sessions have been recorded and are available in MP3 download format with a print booklet and will be available on CDs in the near future. There is a parent guide session, and eight sessions for the child completed over the course of 60 days.
 
The instructional booklet includes symptom-rating charts, (one with colorable smiley faces), a listening schedule, information on IBS, FAP, and other related symptoms and emotional concerns, messages to the parent(s)/guardian(s) and to the child, full explanations and resource material as well as continued support via Web site, e-mail, or phone.
 
The impact of providing another avenue of treatment to this patient population not only assists the healthcare provider to work holistically with the pediatric patient, but also provides the children and parents with an ongoing tool to avoid further decline in the child’s health. Resources are provided for coping with the child’s return to school, which reduces and usually eliminates future school absences. This, in turn, gives the child a better future for learning, and eventually for employment.
 
There is such a need to eliminate suffering for these children and get their lives back on track. My greatest reward is seeing a child transform from one, who a few months before, was curled up in pain crying, to a happy, pain-free child who now greets me with a smile and a hug!
 
Michael Mahoney, MDHthp (a master’s degree in clinical hypnotherapy) is a clinical hypnotherapist in private practice at the Guardian Medical Centre, in Cheshire, England, and is a member of the Primary Care Society for Gastroenterology, the Hypnotherapy Association, The British Council of Hypnotist Examiners, as well as the International Foundation for Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders, the European Association for Cancer Education and the International Functional Brain-Gut Research Group. Further information may be found at www.childspain.com and www.IBSCDS.com.