Basic HTML Version
204
MARK P. JENSEN ET AL.
were otherwise unrelated to hypnotic treatment; 2 developed a urinary
tract infection during treatment and 1 underwent surgery during the
follow-up period. In addition, 3 of the participants elected to discon-
tinue treatment before all 10 of the planned treatment sessions had
been completed. These included 1 participant who elected to stop
treatment after a single session, a second who discontinued treatment
after three sessions, and a third participant who discontinued treat-
ment after six sessions (2 of these did not provide complete data). The
7 participants who (a) developed medical problems, (b) did not com-
plete treatment, or (c) did not provide complete data were excluded
from the efficacy analyses, leaving 26 participants for these analyses,
reported below.
Intervention Protocol
The intervention protocol consisted of 10 sessions of hypnotic anal-
gesia administered as frequently as daily (i.e., over the course of 2
weeks) or as infrequently as weekly, depending upon the availability
and interest of the participant. Of the 30 participants who completed
all 10 treatment sessions, 8 chose to have the sessions administered
daily, 8 scheduled the sessions to occur over a 3-week period, 10
scheduled the sessions over a 4-week period, and the remainder (4 par-
ticipants) scheduled the sessions over a 5- (about 2 sessions per week)
to 12-week (about 1 session per week) period.
All of the sessions were based on a protocol written by three of the
study investigators (MPJ, JB, and DRP).
4
All study clinicians (MPJ,
MH, JE, JR) were given clinical supervision by a study investigator
with more than 30 years of clinical experience in the hypnotic treat-
ment of chronic pain ( JB). To maximize treatment standardization
across clinicians, the intervention protocol was read to the participants
by the study clinicians during each treatment session, although minor
wording changes were allowed if the clinician judged that this would
facilitate the verbal flow of the script. In addition, one or two of the
treatment sessions for each study participant were videotaped by the
study clinicians and reviewed on a regular basis with the study clinical
supervisor ( JB), who provided feedback to help the clinicians maxi-
mize their clinical efficacy.
The intervention script took approximately 35 minutes to read and
began with an induction followed by one of five specific suggestions
for analgesia or comfort/relaxation. After the first suggestion, partici-
pants were asked to return to a fully alert state and then underwent a
second induction followed by a second suggestion. This process was
repeated until five inductions and five analgesic suggestions were admin-
istered. The order of the five analgesic suggestions was randomized using
4
Copies of the entire protocol script are available from the first author.