Cognitive-behavior therapy and exposure and response prevention are the most effective psychological treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, these approaches often produce variable results with the majority of treated individuals remaining symptomatic. This study evaluated a new form of cognitive therapy based on Wells' metacognitive model of OCD. Treatment efficacy was assessed using single case methodology in 4 consecutively referred individuals. At post-treatment, all participants made clinically significant change on a range of standardized outcome measures and these gains were largely maintained through to 6-month follow-up. Metacognitive therapy could be an effective and time efficient treatment for OCD.

J Behav Ther Exp Psychiatry. 2008 Jun;39(2):117-32. Fisher PL, Wells A. Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Liverpool, Brownlow Hill, Liverpool L69 3GB, UK.

Neurocognitive research has the potential to identify the relevant effects of music therapy. In this study, we examined the effect of music mode (major vs. minor) on stress reduction using optical topography and an endocrinological stress marker. In salivary cortisol levels, we observed that stressful conditions such as mental fatigue (thinking and creating a response) was reduced more by major mode music than by minor mode music. We suggest that music specifically induces an emotional response similar to a pleasant experience or happiness. Moreover, we demonstrated the typical asymmetrical pattern of stress responses in upper temporal cortex areas, and suggested that happiness/sadness emotional processing might be related to stress reduction by music.

Neuroreport. 2008 Jan 8;19(1):75-8. Suda M, Morimoto K, Obata A, Koizumi H, Maki A. Department of Social and Environmental Medicine, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Suita, Osaka, Japan. miyuki@envi.med.osaka-u.ac.jp

This Rogerian study examined how traditional and Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic support groups facilitated self-defined health-promoting goals and power as knowing participation in change for 49 participants with chronic physical illness. The participants were randomly assigned to either a traditional support group or an Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic support group. Measurements of power and self-defined health-promoting goals were obtained seven times over a 10-week period. The results indicated that both the traditional support groups and the Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic support groups experienced significantly enhanced power and progressed significantly toward their health-promoting goals. Correlations for the self-defined health-promoting goals and power progressively and significantly increased through time. This study supports Barrett's claim that power relates to health.

Nurs Sci Q. 2007 Oct;20(4):357-69. Larkin DM. The College of New Rochelle, School of Nursing, New Rochelle, New York, USA.

A Book Review by Tim Brunson DCH

Transformation is different than change, says Marilyn Gordon, BCH, CI, in The Wise Mind: The Brilliant Key to Life Transformation. She claims that true transformation is a matter of dynamically altering perspectives. After reading this quite enjoyable and inspirational book, I couldn't help being impressed with its immense wisdom and clarity.

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Spanish histologist Santiago Ramón y Cajal, one of the most notable figures in Neuroscience, and winner, along with Camillo Golgi, of the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discoveries on the structure of the nervous system, did not escape experimenting with some of the psychiatric techniques available at the time, mainly hypnotic suggestion, albeit briefly. While a physician in his thirties, Cajal published a short article under the title, "Pains of labour considerably attenuated by hypnotic suggestion" in Gaceta Médica Catalana. That study may be Cajal's only documented case in the field of experimental psychology. We here provide an English translation of the original Spanish text, placing it historically within Cajal's involvement with some of the key scientific and philosophical issues at the time.

J Hist Neurosci. 2007 Oct-Dec;16(4):351-61. Stefanidou M, Solà C, Kouvelas E, Cerro MD, Triarhou LC. Economo-Koskinas Wing for Integrative and Evolutionary Neuroscience, Department of Educational and Social Policy, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece.

Dr. Joan Klagsbrun is a practicing psychologist, and a Boston area certifying coordinator for the Focusing Institute. She is also a member of the Institute's Board of Directors and co-director of the Institute's Focusing and Medicine Project. She has 27 years experience integrating Focusing into psychotherapy practice with individuals and couples. Since 1976, She introduced over a thousand people to Focusing through local, national, and international workshops and classes. She teaches to the general public, psychotherapists, clergy and healthcare professionals.

She is an Adjunct Professor in Psychology at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts.

For more information visit www.NewEnglandFocusing.com.

In order to make a recommendation about the use of hypnosis as adjuvant therapy in the treatment of breast cancer, 2 studies assessing the immunological effects of hypnosis in patients with early stage breast cancer were evaluated: (a) an experiment that taught hypnotic guided-imagery therapy to patients and (b) one that provided participants with home visits and autogenic training. Both investigations demonstrated improvement in depression and increased natural killer (NK) cell counts after 2 months of hypnosis treatment. However, neither study determined the clinical significance of hypnosis in the setting of cancer, and therefore future experiments are needed to relate the immune-mediated effects of hypnosis to hard clinical outcomes like survival rates.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):411-25. Hudacek KD. University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. hudacek@mail.med.upenn.edu

This study investigated the influence of hypnotic emotional inhibition on emotional response to and recall of emotional features of autobiographical memories. Twenty-nine high hypnotizable participants were administered a hypnotic induction and either emotional suppression or control instructions and then were asked to recall a personal distressing or neutral autobiographical memory. Dependent variables included self-reported emotion, EMG corrugator muscle activity, and use of affective descriptors in autobiographical memories. Participants in the suppression condition displayed less emotional responsivity on self-report and EMG corrugator muscle activity than other participants during recall of the distressing memory. In contrast, emotional suppression did not influence the use of affective descriptors in the content of personal memories. These findings point to the capacity for hypnotic emotional inhibition to differentially influence affective and semantic components of the emotional response.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):426-34. Bryant RA, Fearns S. School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. r.bryant@unsw.edu.au

To review the evidence for the effectiveness of complementary and self-help treatments for anxiety disorders and situational anxiety in children and adolescents. DATA SOURCES: Systematic literature search using PubMed, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library for 111 treatments up to February 2006. STUDY SELECTION: There were 11 treatments for which intervention studies had been undertaken and reported. DATA EXTRACTION: Studies on each treatment were reviewed by one author and checked by a second. A consensus was reached for level of evidence. DATA SYNTHESIS: Relevant evidence was available for bibliotherapy, dance and movement therapy, distraction techniques, humour, massage, melatonin, relaxation training, autogenic training, avoiding marijuana, a mineral-vitamin supplement (EMPower +) and music therapy. Findings from case-control studies, individual cohort studies or low quality randomised controlled trials indicated that several treatments may have potential to reduce anxiety, including bibliotherapy, massage, melatonin, and relaxation training. CONCLUSIONS: Although some complementary and self-help treatments might be useful for children and adolescents with anxiety, they need to be tested adequately through randomised controlled trials before they could be recommended.

Med J Aust. 2008 Mar 17;188(6):355-9. Parslow R, Morgan AJ, Allen NB, Jorm AF, O'Donnell CP, Purcell R. Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia. rparslow@unimelb.edu.au.

by Anne Spencer, Ph.D.

One of the most unexpected events in my life was to be doing a regression for weight reduction and find myself involved in an exorcism.

It happened this way. I was asked to work with a national author and speaker who had a weight problem. We'll call her Rose. I first met rose via telephone as I had written her to say how much her book had helped me understand myself and some of my clients. Rose called to thank me and said she would be in my city a few months hence. We met for lunch and the friendship began.

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We just received this from Dan Cleary (via Anne Spencer, Ph.D.). Henry Leo Bolduc, a well respected hypnotherapist recently had a accident while cutting wood on his farm in Virginia. Please join us with the rest of the hypnotherapy and mind/body community showing support for Henry and his wife Joan. Below is the text of the e-mail received from Dan and Anne.

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Henry and his wife Joanie, live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, near a crossroads called Wytheville. They live out in the backside of nowhere and that is where Henry was on March 5th, when there was a terrible accident. Henry was home alone and out on the property cutting fire wood with a chain saw. There was a slip, a misstep and the saw came down on Henry's left arm, just above the wrist, nearly severing his hand from his arm. The chain cut through skin, muscles, bone and tissue.

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Chaotic transitions emerge in a wide variety of cognitive phenomena and may possibly be linked to specific changes during development of mental disorders. There are several hypotheses that link the dissociation to critical chaotic shifts with the resulting self-organization of behavioral patterns during critical periods. In 2 patients, hypnotic revivification of dissociated trauma along with measurement of bilateral electrodermal activity (EDA) for therapeutic and research purposes was performed. Nonlinear data analysis of EDA records shows a difference between degree of chaos in hypnotic relaxed state before revivification of the trauma and dissociated state after reliving the traumatic memory. Results suggest that the dissociated state after revivification of the trauma is significantly more chaotic than the state during the hypnotic relaxation before the event. Findings of this study suggest a possible role of neural chaos in the processing of the dissociated traumatic memory during hypnotic revivification.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):435-56. Bob P. Department of Psychiatry, 1st Faculty of Medicine, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. petrbob@netscape.net

Hypnotically assisted treatments have been used to reduce stress, improve gastrointestinal motility, strengthen immune function, and potentially reduce inflammation. Such treatments may also help reduce disease flares and improve quality of life in inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). The authors report the results of a case series of 8 white female patients with inactive IBD. All participants initiated and completed treatment, supporting the general acceptability of hypnotically assisted treatment among IBD patients. There was a significant improvement in IBD-quality of life scores for the group posttreatment, t(7) = -3.38, p = .01, with a mean improvement in quality of life of 29 points with significant changes in all 4 subscales. No negative effects of treatment were found.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):457-66. Keefer L, Keshavarzian A. Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois, USA. laurie.keefer@northwestern.edu

Ann Kearney-Cooke,PhD,a well known psychologist and workshop leader is the author of Change Your Mind Change Your Body:Feeling Good About Your Body and Self After Forty[Simon&Schuster,2004].She was awarded the Distinquished Scholar Award at The Partnership For Gender Specific Medicine at Columbia University for her leadership in womens health.She is the author of numerous scientific articles on self esteem,body image ,and eating disorders.She has served as an expert on dozens of television shows including the Oprah Winfrey Show,Jane Pauley Show,CNN,Forty Eight Hours,and the Today Show.Her work is frequently featured in woman™s magazines and newspapers including the New York Times and USA Today.

Dr. Charles-Humbert Antoine Despine's (1777-1852) De L'Emploi du magnétisme animal et des eaux minerales dans le traitement des maladies nerveuses, suivi d'une observation très curieuse de guérison de névropathie [A Study of the uses of animal magnetism in the treatment of disorders of the nervous system followed by a case of a highly unusual cure of neuropathy] (Paris: Germer, Baillière, 1840) is one of the earliest published, complete accounts of a successful cure with animal magnetism of a dissociative disorder. Despine's methodical and gentle treatment of more than 20 patients with multiple personalities repeatedly brought fusion to separation. His writing style displays a lack of order and unity that resembles the dissociative symptoms of his patients, but the monograph's sloppiness belies Despine's methodical approach to his work and his thoughtful handling of his patients. This paper explores these inconsistencies and how translators of the monograph act as literary therapists for his confused and fragmented account.

Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):486-96. Comment in: Int J Clin Exp Hypn. 2007 Oct;55(4):497-8. McKeown JM. Moravian College, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18018, USA. mejmd01@moravian.edu

The experience of 6 college-age women with bulimia nervosa was examined after they participated in an 8-week mindfulness-based eating disorder treatment group. This phenomenological study used individual interview and pre- and post-treatment self-portraits. Participants described their experience of transformation from emotional and behavioral extremes, disembodiment, and self-loathing to the cultivation of an inner connection with themselves resulting in greater self-awareness, acceptance, and compassion. They reported less emotional distress and improved abilities to manage stress. This treatment may help the 40% of women who do not improve with current therapies and might be useful to prevent symptoms in younger women.

Eat Disord. 2008 Jan-Feb;16(1):52-72 Proulx K. University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA. kproulx55@comcast.net

Our objective was to assess the effect of Therapeutic Touch (TT) on the proliferation of normal human cells in culture compared to sham and no treatment. Several proliferation techniques were used to confirm the results, and the effect of multiple 10-minute TT treatments was studied. Design: Fibroblasts, tendon cells (tenocytes), and bone cells (osteoblasts) were treated with TT, sham, or untreated for 2 weeks, and then assessed for [(3)H]-thymidine incorporation into the DNA, and immunocytochemical staining for proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). The number of PCNA-stained cells was also quantified. For 1 and 2 weeks, varying numbers of 10-minute TT treatments were administered to each cell type to determine whether there was a dose-dependent effect. Results: TT administered twice a week for 2 weeks significantly stimulated proliferation of fibroblasts, tenocytes, and osteoblasts in culture (p = 0.04, 0.01, and 0.01, respectively) compared to untreated control. These data were confirmed by PCNA immunocytochemistry. In the same experiments, sham healer treatment was not significantly different from the untreated cultures in any group, and was significantly less than TT treatment in fibroblast and tenocyte cultures. In 1-week studies involving the administration of multiple 10-minute TT treatments, four and five applications significantly increased [(3)H]-thymidine incorporation in fibroblasts and tenocytes, respectively, but not in osteoblasts. With different doses of TT for 2 weeks, two 10-minute TT treatments per week significantly stimulated proliferation in all cell types. Osteoblasts also responded to four treatments per week with a significant increase in proliferation. Additional TT treatments (five per week for 2 weeks) were not effective in eliciting increased proliferation compared to control in any cell type. Conclusions: A specific pattern of TT treatment produced a significant increase in proliferation of fibro-blasts, osteoblasts, and tenocytes in culture. Therefore, TT may affect normal cells by stimulating cell proliferation.

J Altern Complement Med. 2008 Mar 27 Gronowicz GA, Jhaveri A, Clarke LW, Aronow MS, Smith TH. Department of Surgery, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT.

Aims and objectives. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of music therapy on stress, anxiety and depression in Taiwanese pregnant women. Background. The value of music therapy is slowly being realized by nurses in various clinical areas, including obstetrics. Previous studies have demonstrated a high prevalence of psychological stress during pregnancy. Few studies have examined the effects of music therapy on reducing psychological stress during pregnancy. Design. A randomized experimental study design was developed and implemented. Methods. Two hundred and thirty-six pregnant women were randomly assigned to music therapy (n = 116) and control (n = 120) groups. The music therapy group received two weeks of music intervention. The control group received only general prenatal care. Psychological health was assessed using three self-report measures: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), State Scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (S-STAI) and Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Results. In a paired t-test, the music therapy group showed significant decrease in PSS, S-STAI and EPDS after two weeks. The control group only showed a significant decrease in PSS after two weeks. This decrease was not as substantial as in the experimental group. An ancova test with the pretest scores as the control revealed that the changes in PSS, S-STAI and EPDS after two weeks were significantly decreased in the experimental group compared with the control group. Conclusions. This controlled trial provides preliminary evidence that two-week music therapy during pregnancy provides quantifiable psychological benefits. Relevance to clinical practice. The findings can be used to encourage pregnant women to use this cost-effective method of music in their daily life to reduce their stress, anxiety and depression. Further research is needed to test the long-term benefits.

J Clin Nurs. 2008 Feb 19 Chang MY, Chen CH, Huang KF. National Tainan Institute of Nursing, Taiwan, and College of Nursing, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.

Temporomandibular disorders (TMDs) involve a heterogeneous group of clinical conditions affecting the stomatognathic system and its related structures. Because the etiology of these disorders is still unclear, a wide range of therapeutic solutions has been proposed in the literature, including occlusal appliances, physical therapies, drugs, and biobehavioral modalities. Biobehavioral therapy could have a beneficial effect in the treatment of TMDs because of the reportedly high prevalence of psychological dysfunction in TMD patients. The authors reviewed the biobehavioral modalities used to achieve pain relief in patients affected by such disorders, with the aim of synthesizing data on the effectiveness these therapeutic approaches. Literature data suggest that the inclusion of biobehavioral interventions in the management of TMDs may be reasonable, even if no conclusions can be drawn about their long-term effectiveness.

Behav Med. 2007 Fall;33(3):101-18. Orlando B, Manfredini D, Salvetti G, Bosco M. The Department of Neuroscience, Section of Prosthetic Dentistry, University of Pisa, Italy.

A six-year-old boy with oesophageal strictures secondary to neonatal repair of oesophageal atresia and requiring six to eight weekly oesophageal dilatations by bouginage developed anticipatory nausea and vomiting. This was effectively managed by a course of preoperative hypnotherapy over four sessions. Resolution of anticipatory nausea and vomiting occurred along with cessation of postoperative nausea and vomiting. This case supports early intervention with preoperative hypnotherapy in children with anticipatory nausea and vomiting that has not responded to other measures.

Anaesth Intensive Care. 2007 Oct;35(5):784-7. Mackenzie A, Frawley GP. Department of Paediatric Anaesthesia and Pain Management, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.