Gina Orlando has a Master of Arts from DePaul University, Chicago, IL as an Educator and Consultant in Holistic Health Promotion and Alternative Medical Therapies, a C.H. (Certified Hypnotherapist) from the Leidecker Institute, Elgin, IL , and is also certified in Complementary Medical Hypnosis through the National Guild of Hypnotists, Nashua, NH.

Gina is also a wellness consultant who uses Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), Transformational Healing Method (THM), Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), meditative techniques, and some effective techniques to access spiritual awareness and healing. She is also trained in Level Two Reiki.

For more information visit www.ginaorlando.com

Awareness of depression among OB-GYN physicians has increased with the result that more than 13% of pregnant women in the United States receive prescriptions for antidepressant medications. But the safety and effectiveness of these compounds has been exaggerated while the effectiveness of psychotherapy has been overlooked and distorted and various medical guidelines for treatment of perinatal depression have been downplayed or ignored. This article addresses the common fears and misconceptions surrounding treatment of depression during pregnancy and after childbirth. The effectiveness of strategic cognitive-behavioral therapy enhanced with hypnosis offers excellent results without the risks associated with these medications. Targets for focused intervention are identified and discussed.

Am J Clin Hypn. 2013 Jan;55(3):291-323. Rosenquist SE. DrSara@DrSara.com

by Tim Brunson, PhD

Over the past several years too many people have had to cope with the stress of financial difficulties. Very rarely have these situations been the consequence of poor decisions on the part of the affected individuals. Yet, it is so difficult for someone undergoing such stresses and strains to convince themselves that they are not at fault.

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Ed Martin is a professional hypnotist who has worked for many years with hypnosis to assist in overcoming illness and disease. He has been a pioneer in using the tools of hypnosis for critical illness recovery and cellular regeneration. He is the developer of a technique called "Cell Command Therapy® and Cellular Releasing© which uses deep trance hypnosis commands to the cellular levels for restoration and regeneration. It has demonstrated results for many diseases and problems. In some cases it has caused the client to appear to grow younger.

Martin's career began as engineer, first as a civil engineer, then as a computer engineer and consultant, with hypnosis as a hobby. Finally an unexplainable healing experience using hypnosis caused him to rethink the way we program our minds and bodies. This caused his interest, study and work with hypnosis. With more that 20 years in the computer field, from IBM to private consulting, he began to see the parallels of the mind with the computer, and he developed these tools to work with man's own personal computer.

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Full title: Medical hypnosis as a tool to acclimatize children to non-invasive positive pressure ventilation: a pilot study.

Patient cooperation is crucial for success of non-invasive positive pressure ventilation (NPPV). This study evaluated the efficacy of medical hypnosis to reduce the anticipatory anxiety and the acclimatization time in children candidates for long-term NPPV. METHODS Medical hypnosis was performed by a trained nurse. The acclimatization time and long-term compliance with NPPV were evaluated. RESULTS Hypnosis was performed in 9 children, aged 2 to 15 years old; 7 children with a high level of anticipatory anxiety because of a tracheotomy since birth (2 patients), a history of maxillofacial surgery (2 patients), severe dyspnea due to lung disease (2 patients), morbid obesity and depression (1 patient), and 2 children with obstructive sleep apnea who failed standard NPPV initiation. The hypnosis techniques were based on distraction in the youngest patient and indirect or direct hypnotic suggestions in the older children, in order to obtain a progressive psycho-corporal relaxation. All the patients accepted the interface and the NPPV after the first hypnosis session. A median of three sessions was needed for overnight (> 6 hours) NPPV acceptance. The 6-months compliance with NPPV was excellent with a median use of 7.5 hours/night. CONCLUSION Medical hypnosis is a very effective, safe, non-invasive, and cheap tool for reducing the anticipatory distress and acclimatizing time for NPPV. This therapy is particularly useful in children with traumatic experiences such as a tracheotomy or facial surgical procedures.

Chest. 2013 Feb 7. doi: 10.1378/chest.12-2259. Delord V, Khirani S, Ramirez A, Joseph EL, Gambier C, Belson M, Gajan F, Fauroux B.

by Tim Brunson PhD

Once patterns are established they becomes habituated – and stored primarily in the parietal lobe and within our physiology. They become relatively rigid, are dominated by implicit memories, and involve primitive limbic functions rather than the more intellectual frontal lobe. Therefore, once a pattern is habituated – at any level – it resists all efforts to change. Remembering that the human mind and body is a multi-level aggregate of components and systems, each with their own form of consciousness and intelligence, it is very important to realize that they are obsessed with the compulsion to retain familiar patterns. The goal is to hold onto those patterns at all costs, even if a component or system's patterns are contrary to the interests (i.e. the survival) of that element's patterns. The ultimate obsession with survival is not for the survival of the system, but the survival of its habituated patterns (Bandler, 2008).

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by John Freedom, CEHP

The International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry's (ISEPP) has denounced the upcoming DSM-5. Thomas Insel, the director of the National Institutes of Mental Health has announced that the federal agency – which provides grants for research on mental illness – will be "re-orienting its research away from DSM categories." Thomas Insel's statement comes just weeks before the scheduled publication of the DSM-V, the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

Insel writes:

"While DSM has been described as a 'Bible' for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each. The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been 'reliability'– each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we have understood that symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of treatment. Patients with mental disorders deserve better."

Insel said that the NIMH will be replacing the DSM with the "Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)," which define mental disorders based not just on vague symptomology but on more specific genetic, neural and cognitive data. But then, immediately after making this dramatic announcement, Insel added that "we cannot design a system based on biomarkers or cognitive performance because we lack the data."

Insel's statement is also an implicit admission that there is no real theoretical basis for drug treatments for mental illness.

See: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/05/04/psychiatry-in-crisis-mental-health-director-rejects-psychiatric-bible-and-replaces-with-nothing

John Freedom, CEHP, is the Chair of the ACEP Research Committee. For more information visit: EnergyPsych.org

Lee Pascoe is Australian and pursued her studies in Psychology, Languages, Education and Speech and Drama at the University of Adelaide and Adelaide Teachers College. After teaching in State High Schools, she then returned to a lecturer's post in Speech and Drama at Adelaide Teachers College, followed by a Government Education Department consultant's post, which involved touring in a Theatre-in-Education team, and training other teachers and consultants. She also developed a career as an actress, dancer and singer, on live stage as well as television.

Arriving in Europe in 1984, she has since spent her time expanding her skills in developing human resources, in the public domain and in businesses. For fourteen years she has presented the popular techniques of the Silva Mind Control Method, and became Director of Paris, most of France and other French-speaking countries, winning a series of Best Instructor Prizes, and the World Cup for Outstanding Foreign Director.

During this time, Lee also developed particular interests in Accelerated Learning and Hypnosis. She is a certified Hypnotherapist and Advanced Trainer for the National Guild of Hypnotists, U.S.A. Lee has presented seminars and workshops in France, Luxembourg, Belgium, New Caledonia, French West Indies, Australia, Canada, Morocco, England, Ireland, and the United States.

She currently has her own company, Global Desk Ltd., based in England, from which she presents various seminars and workshops under the title "Success Seminar Systems" and was a keynote speaker at the 2001 PSA Convention.

For more information, visit www.leepascoe.com

Over half of psychiatric patients use some kind of Complementary and Alternative Medicine, with Mind-Body Medicine (MBM) being the most commonly used collective modality. To date however, to our knowledge, no overarching review exists examining MBM for psychotic disorders. Thus the purpose of this paper is to present the first review in this area. A MEDLINE search was conducted of articles written in English from 1946 up to Jan15 2011 using a range of MBM and psychotic disorder search terms. Human clinical trials, and where available, pertinent meta-analyses and reviews were included in this paper. Forty-two clinical studies and reviews of MBMs were located, revealing varying levels of evidence. All studies included used MBMs as an adjunctive therapy to usual care, including medication. Overall supportive evidence was found for music therapy, meditation and mindfulness techniques. Some positive studies were found for yoga and breathing exercises, general relaxation training, and holistic multi-modality MBM interventions. Due to insufficient data, a conclusion cannot be reached for hypnosis, thermal or EMG biofeedback, dance or drama therapy, or art therapy. No clinical trials were found for guided imagery, autogenic training, journal writing, or ceremony practices. For many techniques, the quality of research was poor, with many studies having small samples, no randomization, and no adequate control. While the above techniques are likely to be safe and tolerable in this population, based on current data, more research is required to decisively assess the validity of applying many MBMs in the mainstream treatment of psychotic disorders.

Clin Schizophr Relat Psychoses. 2013 Feb 21:1-29. Helgason C, Sarris J. Department of Psychiatry, University of Nebraska, College of Medicine, Omaha, Nebraska.

Marie Mongan, M.Ed., M.Hy., of Concord, N.H. is an award-winning hypnotherapist who brings to her classroom over thirty years experience in education and counselling on the collegiate level and in the private sector. She is a former college dean who, early in her career, was named one of five outstanding educational leaders in New Hampshire and awarded a Ford Foundation Fellowship to Harvard University.

In the spring of 1992 she traveled to Moscow as an American diplomat with The Bridges for Peace Foundation, where she taught personnel management techniques to Russian women. Marie (best known as "Mickey") is licensed by the State of New Hampshire as a counsellor and is certified as a hypnotherapist, hypnoanaesthesiologist, and instructor of hypnotherapy. She holds several awards for distinguished service and achievement in the field and is the 1995 recipient of the National Guild of Hypnotists President's Award.

In 2000 she was presented with the coveted NGH Charles Tebbetts Award for her contribution in "shedding the light" and advancing the awareness of hypnosis. Her practice includes group and individual work in a wide spectrum of therapy applications.

Mickey is also the mother of four children, all born in the late 50s and early 60s. She experienced all four labours using the techniques of Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, the pioneer in the field of natural childbirth, upon whose work she based "HypnoBirthing® - The Mongan Method". Two of her birthings were entirely free of anaesthesia at a time when it was unheard of.

For more information, visit www.hypnobirthing.co.uk

Because medical students experience a considerable amount of stress during training, academic leaders have recognized the importance of developing stress-management programs for medical students. The authors set out to identify all controlled trials of stress-management interventions and determine the efficacy of those interventions. METHOD The authors searched the published English-language articles on PsycINFO and PubMed, using a combination of the following search terms: stress-management, distress, burnout, coping, medical student, wellness. Both randomized, controlled trials and controlled, non-randomized trials of stress-management programs were selected and critically appraised. RESULTS A total of 13 randomized, controlled trials or controlled, non-randomized trials were identified. Interventions included self-hypnosis, meditation, mindfulness-based stress-reduction, feedback on various health habits, educational discussion, changes in the length and type of curriculum, and changes in the grading system. Only one study was identified to be of very high quality, although several had described group differences at baseline, used blinding, had good follow-up, and used validated assessment tools. There was a wide heterogeneity of outcome measures used. Interventions that were supported by a reduction in stress and anxiety in medical students included mindfulness-based stress-reduction or meditation techniques, self-hypnosis, and pass/fail grading. CONCLUSIONS Significant opportunities to advance educational research in this field exist by developing more high-quality studies with particular attention to randomization techniques and standardizing outcome measures.

Acad Psychiatry. 2013 Feb 27. doi: 10.1176/appi.ap.12010003. Shiralkar MT, Harris TB, Eddins-Folensbee FF, Coverdale JH.