Clinical hypnotherapy is a common form of therapy for many emotional disorders including phobias, compulsions, unwanted habits, lack of self-confidence, or even physical conditions like irritable bowel syndrome and arthritis.

Hypnosis places the patient into a trance-like state which falls somewhere between wakefulness and sleep. It taps into the subconscious which hypnotherapists and psychologists claim is a source of many of our problems. Following the hypnotherapist’s communication with this section of the patient’s mind, it is believed that the patient can ‘unlearn’ conditioned habits which manifest in the real world as emotional or physical disorders.

As well as being a symptom of a physical condition like hearing loss, tinnitus is also deeply connected with the emotional and stress-causing centers of the brain. It seems logical to contend that if you can reduce the subconscious fear and anxiety caused by tinnitus using hypnotherapy, you can reduce the awareness of tinnitus and thus improve quality of life.

Hypnotherapists commonly quote a 70% success rate in promotional brochures, but although hypnotherapy has been used for tinnitus management for nearly 30 years, few studies have been conducted into its clinical efficacy.

A study in 2007 concluded that 5 to 10 sessions of Ericksonian hypnotherapy resulted in significant improvements in tinnitus for 35 patients with mild to severe tinnitus. These patients were also taught self-hypnosis so that they could continue therapy without a hypnotherapist[[i]].

These results have been vindicated by a larger study with 393 tinnitus sufferers who were also given Ericksonian hypnotherapy for 28 days. 88% of patients with chronic tinnitus showed improvement immediately after the sessions and 6 to 12 months after the therapy, indicating long-lasting results [[ii]].

Although both reports show a reduction in tinnitus, there were no control groups, so despite good statistics it cannot be determined whether the results are attributable to the therapeutic effects of hypnosis, or simply the counseling effect of talking to someone about their tinnitus. Indeed, a study has shown there was no difference in tinnitus reduction between patients who had three sessions of hypnotherapy compared to a single counseling session, indicating no real benefit [[iii]].

Also not all hypnotherapy is the same, ranging from traditional suggestive hypnosis to Ericksonian hypnotherapy to neuro-linguistic programming. These techniques will probably yield different results for different patients, and there is currently not enough research to ascertain which is most effective for tinnitus.

Some hypnotherapy regimes rely on self-hypnosis, which may not be a good option for everyone, particularly for the extremely elderly [[iv]]. Finally, the effectiveness of any psychological treatment will depend heavily on the person administering it, so it is worth assessing the reputation of local hypnotherapists before considering this treatment.