Paradigms in Integrative Medicine and the Place of Clinical Hypnosis

The face of illness has changed with progress in public health, immunizations, and antibiotic medication. Today, medical clinics are more likely to see patients with chronic illnesses, stress-related conditions, and complex bio-psycho-social conditions. This is a global trend, affecting patients worldwide, as Western lifestyle and diet have produced increases in chronic lifestyle-based disorders. Integrative medicine, which attends more fully to psychosocial dimensions of illness, appears to offer promise for today’s patient. One might expect hypnosis to assume a central place in integrative healthcare settings, because hypnosis is evidence-based, person-centered, and attuned to subjective and life-historical dimensions of the human being. However, hypnosis currently receives relatively little attention in integrative medicine circles, and hypnosis is underutilized in spite of the availability of many effective clinical protocols for a wide range of medical disorders. This article introduces emerging paradigms in integrative healthcare and suggests that the field of hypnosis must increase attention to these paradigms and improve educational preparation for hypnosis practitioners to function within these paradigms.