Hypnotherapy (AHA) for mental illness can help in some cases in my clinic. You may even get health-fund rebates.
This, however, is a bit of a ‘how long is a piece of string’, question. Different practitioners classify mental illness differently and even treat it differently.
As a clinical naturopath (ANPA) and mental health professional (PACFA) I first of all screen for any physiological disturbance. These metabolic errors are often missed by family doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists.
These may include blood tests, genetic profiles, gut microbiome mapping, allergies, nutritional irregularities, poisoning and metabolic failures. Problem with these may produce unusual behaviours, anxiety, depression, mood disorder and even hallucinations.
Psychobiological feed back
There is a feed-back loop that operates in your body. Unusual behaviour cause biological dysfunctions and biological dysfunctions produce unusual behaviours.
So, I do an extensive screening with you to find out if your body is working well. If it’s not, no amount of talking or hypnotherapy is going to work.
There is no one method or treatment that fits all. Your treatment plan is devised specifically for you, and you alone.
Good mental health depends on that natural balanced, healthy, feedback loop between your mind and your body being restored.
Poor screening of mental illness
A six-minute consultation with your family doctor or thirty 30 minutes with a psychiatrist is not enough time to gather in-depth information about what is happening with you.
Ayano published a study in 2021 that reported that 39.16% of severe psychiatric patients were misdiagnosed. Vermani et al in 2011 found that 65.9% of major depressive, 92.7% of biopolar, 85.8% of panic attacks, 71% of anxiety and 97.9% of social phobias were all misdiagnosed.
Here’s an interesting fact mental illness is categorised by the symptoms described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders funded by drug companies. Up 100% of the publishing committee members had financial ties to drug companies that make billions of dollars of profit from medications.
That meant that these people were given medications and treatments that damaged them, not helped them or was ineffective. Psychiatric medications are prescribed to suppress symptoms, not resolve them.
This means many people can still be ill but are drugged into a stupor like state and or hyper stimulated and become addicted to those drugs.
The reasons for over diagnosis
Most people in the Western world do not pay attention to their mental health; how to create and maintain it. We are educated as children to fit into the industrial machine, which can at times be extremely stressful. It can cause symptoms which appear to be mental illness but are really stress, exhaustion, fear and lack of life skills.
Actual psychosis in mental illness involving, paranoia, hallucinations, sociopathic tendences is much rarer. It always involves changes in the brain’s architecture and hormonal dysregulation. This needs intensive long-term clinical help.
Joel Paris Professor of Psychiatry at McGill University has commented, “Diagnoses are made rapidly – and often inaccurately. Instead of listening, and asking about current circumstances, psychiatrists focus on a checklist of symptoms, a kind of parody of the criteria listed in the DSM manual.”
There is also often racial, cultural, class, educational, social, gender, religious and ableist bias in the diagnosis of mental illness. This perspective of not looking at a patient’s life in its entirety is frequently not taken into account when making a diagnosis.
The global approach to metal distress
We all suffer extreme distress at times because it is part of being human. It might not mean we have a severe mental illness but that our body is not working correctly or we have developed ways of thinking that do not serve us.
Therefore – you have to change both. No ‘one pill’ is going to cure all your ills. There may be several things you need to change.
When I see you we make a list of the changes you need to make that you take away with you in writing after the first session. Later we may add to that list according to your progress.
Well-being is what you create from the treatment you receive.
I teach you to look after yourself.
I may also work with your existing clinicians if necessary.
Why hypnotherapy can help mental illness?
Hypnosis helps you change the way you think fast – remember the mind body feedback loop.
Your mind is very powerful when I teach you to harness its ability to create a positive living experiences. The learnings go deep into your unconscious mind so they can become automatic every day.
Be prepare to make changes big time. If you want to be different you can’t stay the same. Be prepared to look at things differently and live differently.
Clinical hypnotherapy is also a very pleasant, safe and relaxing experience when you consult a well qualified and experienced professional.
Book your appointment Hypnotherapy for Mental Ilness with Dr Tracie O’Keefe Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH, BHSc, ND clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist, Naturopath & Medical Nutritionist and Orthomolecular Practitioner, PACFA Registered Mental Health Professional. You can visit the clinic or connect by zoom anywhere in the world. Telephone 0403 398808
