House of Lords Inquiry

May 2001

By Bill Doult, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Parliamentary Reporter at the House of Commons, UK

What a silly waste! What a lost opportunity for hypnotherapy. The House of Lords select committee on science and technology spent some 15 months investigating complementary and alternative therapies. It was probably the most thorough, exhaustive and influential look at the issue ever conducted within parliament.

As a result, the 140-page report is to be the basis of any move towards integrating complementary and alternative medicines (CAMS) into the National Health Service and beyond that the possibility of statutory regulation. Even as this article is being written Health Secretary Alan Milburn and his ministers are pondering their responses to the peers' conclusions and recommendations. There is a good chance before you read this, the ministerial decisions will have been announced.

However, whatever the outcome, hypnotherapy as a profession will have played little, if any, part in reaching it. Where other therapies took the inquiry seriously, ensuring their views and judgements were thoroughly rehearsed before the inquiry, hypnotherapy presented remarkably little of any real substance. As a result, in the final report, disciplines such as homeopathy, aromatherapy, acupuncture and herbal medicine are constantly referred to, but hypnotherapy gets but a passing mention. More important, while the inquiry decided acupuncture and herbal medicine both met their criteria for therapies suitable to follow osteopathy and chiropractics into statutory controls, hypnotherapy was relegated to a Second Division, of so-called 'feel good' therapies.

Although hypnotherapy may not have featured much in the reports, many of the inquiry's general conclusions will be significant to the profession, not least if it starts the process of propelling the government to maintaining a closer scrutiny to different therapies. For the peers, headed by former British Medical Association president Lord Walton of Detchant, recognised there is a growing demand for and benefit from what are still regarded as non-conventional therapies. And they accepted that access to such therapies should increasingly be available through the NHS - so long as the efficacy of the treatments have been properly demonstrated.

The risks of unregulated therapies, however, was highlighted by the report, which pointed out there are now an estimated 40,000 unregulated therapists, outnumbering the number of general practitioners across the country. In its recommendations to the government, the committee advised that only therapies with statutory regulations or a 'powerful mechanism of voluntary self-regulation' should be available on the NHS and then only through referral from a GP.

At present only five disciplines - osteopathy, chiropractic, acupuncture, herbal medicine and homeopathy - were thought to meet the necessary criteria. The peers concluded that hypnotherapy should move towards voluntary self-regulation as should several other disciplines such as aromatherapy, reflexology and the Alexander technique. Crucially, the select committee stressed that the therapiest needed to be able to back up their claims with scientific evidence.

Which neatly takes us to the question of what those of us concerned with the welfare of hypnotherapy should be doing now. The answer - providing that evidence of efficacy through properly instituted randomised controlled studies. And this means you. The committee made it clear that if therapies are worthwhile then they must be able to demonstrate that worth by the same criteria as orthodox medicine.

Hynotherapy is well placed to take up this challenge. Hypnotherapy has for several decades been subjected to many properly conducted randomised controlled trials. But these are still not enough. More needs to be done.

Unlike practitioners of some therapies - but especially the alternative variety - hypnotherapy does not need the excuse that our field is so different from conventional healthcare that it is unreasonable to expect us to conform to the same standards of research and evidence. Hypnotherapy can meet those research standards, has met them and now has to establish more research. One practical suggestion made by the inquiry was for the NHS and the Medical Research Council to put money into developing centres of excellence similar to the successful National Centre for Complementary Alternative Medicine in the United States.

During the press conference to the report I asked Lord Walton whether he would be willing to use any of the complementary therapies his committee had examined. It was a query which solicited some laughter but we need to take his reply seriously. 'I would have no difficulty at all if I had troublesome back pain which was not helped by visits to the doctor in consulting an osteopath or a chiropractor. If I was in intolerable pain, I'd at least consider acupuncture. I'd be perfectly prepared to consider herbal remedies that are shown by research to be effective forms of treatment'.

One problem the inquiry quickly identified - which should seem familiar to hypnotherapists - was that most of the disciplines were so divided into different organisations.

Standards of training was another concern and the inquiry found that CAM training courses vary unacceptably in content, depth and duration. It advised that only a concerned partnership between higher education institutions and properly regulated professions as validating bodies will adequately ensure that any CAM practitioner is well trained. Accredited training of CAM practitioners is vital is ensuring that the public are properly protected from incompetent practitioners.

This article first appeared in LCCH News Spring/Summer 2001, the newsletter of the London College of Clinical Hypnosis. http://www.lcch.co.uk

©Bill Doult/LCCH News 2001