Health benefits of a widely available form of hypnosis

Over the past three decades, several studies adopting a complex biopsychosocial approach to disease and medicine examined the health benefits of hypnosis-based techniques at various stages of the oncology clinical pathway. The obtained findings consistently demonstrate that the psychological support provided in hypnosis has measurable and replicable benefits in improving oncological patients’ quality of life by reducing the distress, pain and adverse effects accompanying various oncological conditions and their treatments. However, the psychological support offered by hypnotherapy has not to date been integrated into standard oncological protocols generally available to the affected population, which is in large part due to a lack of adequate human and financial resources. As a result of a recent Hungarian innovation project, the hypnotherapy-based free software application Hipnoword has been developed, whose purpose is to offer widely available and replicable psychological support for oncological patients at each stage of the oncology clinical pathway.

The available reports on the application of hypnosis in oncological care suggest that hypnosis-based techniques not only contribute to positive health outcomes but also raise questions that deserve further empirical investigation. The Hipnoword application provides not only free support for oncological patients but also a useful instrument for clinical research on the health benefits of hypnotherapy.