The International Journal of Indian Psychology
ISSN 2348-5396 (e) | ISSN: 2349-3429 (p)
Volume 4, Issue 1, No. 82, DIP: 18.01.158/20160401
ISBN: 978-1-365-59365-9
http://www.ijip.in | October-December, 2016
© 2016 Teotia A; licensee IJIP. This is an Open Access Research distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any Medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
A Case Study of Hypnoplasty for Migraine Headache
Dr. Anu Teotia
1
*
ABSTRACT
Migraine headache is a type of headache, which may have both organic and psychological
causes. Even if it does not have a psychological origin, psychological factors like stress, anxiety
and frustration have a tendency to aggravate the condition many a times. Thus the psychologists
and the medical practitioners both have a role to play in the management and the treatment of the
migraine headaches.
This paper is a case study of hypnotherapy, more specifically hypnoplasty with an adolescent girl
who came with a problem of migraine headaches. She was given two sessions of hypnoplasty
and one of age-regression with therapeutic –interview and one of positive suggestions. After
these four sessions, two follow-up sessions, first after a time-period of fourteen days (two weeks)
and second after a fifteen days gap were also conducted, during which she reported a remarkable
decrease in the frequency and intensity of the migraine headaches. Her primary expectation of
getting a drug-free treatment for her migraine problem was fulfilled to a great extent as she
stopped taking medicine, when she got 60% decrease in the intensity of the pain after the session
of age-regression with therapeutic-interview. According to her verbatim report, she was able to
perform better academically as due to the decrement in the intensity and the frequency of the
headache, now she is better able to concentrate during studies and also finds studies more
interesting.
Keywords: Hypnotherapy, Hypnoplasty, Miagraine Headache, Drug-Free Treatment
Interest in hypnotic treatment for pain conditions appears to be on the rise. This may be due to
recent evidence that hypnotic analgesia interventions result in substantial cost savings following
medical procedures (Lang et al., 2000) as well as an increasing demand for non-pharmacologic
therapies that do not carry the same troublesome side effects that many medical procedures do
(Blumstein & Gorevic, 2005).
1
Assistant Professor, Amity Institute of Psychology & Allied Sciences, Amity University, Noida, India
*Responding Author