A systematic review exploring the effectiveness of Hypnotherapy as an intervention for the cessation of smoking in individual

Abstract

A significant number of individuals who smoke understand the risks of smoking but are unsuccessful when it comes to implementing smoking cessation. Hypnotherapy is often described as a tool that helps individuals shift their self-image from that of a smoker to a non-smoker. The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the status of existing research on the impact of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation in terms of type of hypnotherapy, type of application, relapse rate, duration of intervention, extent, and safety of smoking cessation, along the effectiveness in comparison with other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions. For this study, the authors used databases such as APA, Scopus, PubMed, JSTOR, and Frontiers for studies that used hypnotic interventions for smoking cessation. The Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines were adhered to for screening of the research papers and finalizing of data, from which the PRISMA flowchart was constructed. The authors extracted data on the nature and characteristics of the studies, the types of interventions used [hypnotherapy as a sole intervention or paired with other interventions], characteristics of the sample population [sample size, control groups, and demographic details of the sample], duration of the interventions, and the method of assessment of smoking abstinence. The results show that there is inconclusive effect of hypnotherapy on smoking cessation in the target population. Hypnotherapy has an apparent effect on behavior formation and change; this review paper will consequently serve to provide a holistic understanding of smoking cessation and hypnotherapy as a tool for it.