“But we don’t do that here, do we?”
More than ten years ago, I trained and was certified as a hypnotherapist through the Hungarian Association of Hypnosis, completing a three-year training pathway.
The training was integrative. We learned the indirect, permissive techniques associated with Milton Erickson – symbols, metaphor, storytelling, and utilisation: tailoring the work to whatever the client brings, including their language, resistances, and idiosyncratic resources. We also learned more direct, classical hypnotic methods. In practice, the two are not opposed; they are different tools for different moments.
Since moving to Australia, I’ve noticed something. Whenever hypnosis comes up in a clinical context, the response is often some version of:
“Is there an evidence base for that?”
It’s a fair question. So here’s a fair answer.
In 2024, Rosendahl, Alldredge, and Haddenhorst published an umbrella review in Frontiers in Psychology synthesising 49 meta-analyses across 261 distinct primary studies on clinical hypnosis over the past two decades.
A few things stood out:
– Reported effect sizes ranged from negligible/null (d = -0.04) to very large (d = 2.72).
– Of the reported effects, 25.4% were medium and 28.8% were large.
– The most robust evidence was found for hypnosis in patients undergoing medical procedures and in patients with pain.
– Only 9 of the 49 meta-analyses were rated as high methodological quality, which is a real limitation of the field rather than a flaw of the synthesis.
In 2026, Çınaroğlu, Yılmazer, and Noyan Ahlatcıoğlu published a systematic review and meta-analysis specifically on Ericksonian hypnotherapy in Psychiatry International. They identified eight RCTs, involving 676 participants, across areas including acute pain, depression, prolonged grief, IBS, disordered eating, and alcohol use disorder.
The review reported a large pooled effect compared with waitlist or standard care (SMD = 1.17), while also noting important limitations: a small number of trials, modest sample sizes, no US-based studies, difficulty fully controlling expectancy effects, and GRADE certainty that was moderate at best.
What does this mean clinically?
It means clinical hypnosis – including the integrative, both-direct-and-indirect style I was trained in – is no longer evidentially silent. It is not “proven” in any final or universal sense, and the mental health evidence base is less mature than the procedural pain evidence. Both things are true.
For me, returning to this area after a decade isn’t about advocacy. It’s about being able to point to the literature when the next “is there evidence for that?” comes.
Sometimes the most useful response to a good clinical question isn’t an argument.
It’s two citations.
Rosendahl, J., Alldredge, C. T., & Haddenhorst, A. (2024). Meta-analytic evidence on the efficacy of hypnosis for mental and somatic health issues: A 20-year perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1330238.
Çınaroğlu, M., Yılmazer, E., & Noyan Ahlatcıoğlu, E. (2026). Ericksonian hypnotherapy: A systematic review and meta-analysis of RCTs. Psychiatry International, 7(1), 16.
Aliz Ovlachi - Clinical Psychologist & Author 