I've been coming across a few mentions of this article from The Times about one young boy's story of using hypnosis to stop bed-wetting and how hypnotherapy compares to other treatments.

Before I go on to talk about this story, I'd just like to say here that, as I read through it, I began to feel a little concerned that The Times had used  the nine-year-old's real name.

Just imagine! The poor little guy goes to school and one of his classmates just happens to have found out that, until very recently, he wet the bed... because he read it in the paper over the weekend!

Now, you may think I'm being a little paranoid, but I think that my clients' confidentiality is crucial, particularly when I'm working with children, because they are not always in a position to make decisions for themselves about what to disclose and what not to disclose.

So I felt a bit cross with The Times about this article because there is absolutely no reason not to change the name of the boy in order to protect his anonymity. 

But back to the content of the article. It's a great story about how the boy in question used a CD made by hypnotherapist, Lynda Hudson, which helped him to stop wetting the bed completely in just three nights. 

His mother was apparently nervous about her son working one-to-one with a hypnotherapist and so chose the CD option. Sadly, the article doesn't go on to explore the mother's safety concerns, which is a shame because that is a real opportunity to discuss the safe and respectful framework that hypnotherapy provides for working with chidren. 

Within a month, the boy was continuously dry through the night and, best of all, he continued to fall asleep to the CD for the next three months because he found it so relaxing. In the article hs mother states:

'He started to wake up with a smile on his face and rapidly regained his confidence.'

Brilliant! And then comes the unexpected twist. The article goes on to say:

'Where Andrew was once withdrawn at school and in social situations, he now has high self-esteem, and even put himself up for school council this year.

"But the best testament to his new-found confidence is that he agreed to be featured and photographed for this article,” says Joanna [his mother]. “I warned him that he might be ridiculed for being a bedwetter, but he said, ‘Well, I did it, Mum. I don't wet the bed any more'.”

Hang on a minute! Photographed! I read the online version of this article in which there is no photograph. You mean, they actually put a photo of him in the paper? What were they thinking of?

But, OK, seriously... It seems that it was this young client's own decision in the end to go public with the details of how he used a self-hypnosis product to overome his own particular challenge. And good for him.

Hypnotherapy and hypnosis are now becoming more understood and it is wonderful when people are happy to share their success stories because it helps others who may be considering using these tools but are still feeling a little apprehensive about what that might entail. 

So I do hope that Andrew received only support and encouragement from his peers. I do hope so.

The article, rather disappointingly, then goes on to give hypnotherapy a score of 2/5 for effectiveness, compared to a 3/5 for prescription drug treatments including desmopressin, which suppresses urine production during the night, even though 'a review of 22 clinical trials, published in 2000, found that children tended to relapse when the drugs were stopped.'

What the article actually says about research into hypnotherapy to prevent bed-wetting is the following:

'There is some limited support from clinical trials to suggest that it is an effective treatment. A 2005 review by the Cochrane Collaboration concluded that there is some weak evidence that hypnosis could treat bedwetting, but it was less effective on children between 5 and 7.'

So what exactly are these trials showing 'limited support,' what do we mean here by 'weak evidence' and how does this compare to the 'good evidence' for the drug therapies? 

Confused?

I really hate this bad science and lazy reporting because it is not giving people real data that they can look up and verify.

Great story. Brilliant young client. Better data, please.