Q1: Do you have any professional experience or exposure to hypnosis? How familiar are you with the topic?
I have been exposed to hypnosis since graduate school at Florida State University in the Clinical Psychology program. My area of focus was behavioral medicine. I am Board Certified in Clinical Health Psychology and have worked in integrated care throughout my career in multiple contexts including a medical school, hospital, co-location in a physician’s office, and in my own independent practice (since 1994). I work primarily with patients with chronic medical conditions, providing evidence-based treatment to assist them in managing their chronic medical condition and live the most productive life possible given their health challenges. Pain management is my area of specialty. Research has indicated that hypnosis interventions consistently produce significant decreases in pain associated with a variety of chronic-pain problems. When I provide workshops on pain management interventions, I mention hypnosis as an intervention.
Q2: Some psychologists tend to focus part of their practice and research on topics that have great scholarly merit but are heuristically considered fringe by others. Hypnosis is an example of this, even though its use has been substantially validated by research. How would you as president help promote topics like hypnosis that could benefit from broader exposure?”
As you know APA has identified the opioid crisis as one of the critical societal issues on which it will focus as part of advancing its new strategic priorities. As they began the planning around this work, they identified three major focus areas where it was believed that APA and psychology can have the most impact. Focus Area #1: Increasing Capacity for Psychological and Behavioral Pain Management Interventions, and Goal #1: Ensure that nonpharmacological pain management is adopted as a critical intervention for prevention and treatment in the nation’s overall approach to the opioid crisis. This is a unique opportunity to highlight hypnosis as one such nonpharmacological intervention. If elected APA President 2021, I would work with the division in advancing/promoting this intervention. In fact, I will send a note to APA CEO, Dr. Arthur Evans, to suggest that working with the division would be important given hypnosis’ role in effective pain management. The division will need to be prepared to provide information about the advantages of psychologists providing this intervention relative to other providers of hypnosis.
Q3: Many in our division are clinicians who would like to make the use of hypnosis a reimbursable expense by insurance companies. Do you support this? If so, what would you do to help make this a reality?
I absolutely support this; I actually thought it was reimbursable. I am curious as to what the national organization has done or is doing as it relates to advocacy in having hypnosis reimbursable by insurance companies, especially in the treatment of certain conditions such as chronic pain. The next step is working with the division to determine what psychology, and in particular APA, can do to advocate for this being reimbursable. I suspect that the national organization has been doing some advocacy for this. Then we can look at this as it relates to the strategic plan.
Q4: How can APA support the development of clinical training and internship programs providing a focus on specialty areas like hypnosis? How can it support the efforts of Divisions to do so?
I think the answer may be related to it being recognized as an effective treatment in the management of health conditions, such as chronic pain. What is known is that there are not enough clinicians trained in pain management. This can be an opportunity to have the training programs to have hypnosis as an area in which the students receive training, from the graduate training to predoctoral internships and finally in post-doctoral training. There needs to be advocacy for this, especially to have it a reimbursable intervention. There will need to be much advocacy on the part of the division for this to occur.
Q5: Recently, College Board, which administers the Advanced Placement Psychology Exam to high school students for potential college credit, eliminated hypnosis from its curriculum. Some are concerned that such a move reflects an overall disinterest in hypnosis, perhaps owing to a lack of knowledge about its nature and what it can do, in modern introductory curricula. How would you, as president, help to ensure that students are appropriately introduced to hypnosis in their formative psychology experience?
I think it would be important for the Division, as well as the national organization, to advocate with members of the College Board, to add hypnosis to the curriculum. They will need to have an understanding of its effectiveness. Hopefully, if they have the knowledge, then the behavior will follow. This could conceivably be done in the context of providing students with information about effective treatments to address the opioid crisis.
It is clear that in all the areas, effective advocacy will be important. I encourage members of the Division to complete the member survey to determine advocacy priorities for the Association.