A Case Study of Hypnoplasty for Migraine Headache

Migraine headache is a type of headache, which may have both organic and psychological causes. Even if it does not have a psychological origin, psychological factors like stress, anxiety and frustration have a tendency to aggravate the condition many a times. Thus the psychologists and the medical practitioners both have a role to play in the management and the treatment of the migraine headaches.

This paper is a case study of hypnotherapy, more specifically hypnoplasty with an adolescent girl who came with a problem of migraine headaches. She was given two sessions of hypnoplasty and one of age-regression with therapeutic –interview and one of positive suggestions. After these four sessions, two follow-up sessions, first after a time-period of fourteen days (two weeks) and second after a fifteen days gap were also conducted, during which she reported a remarkable decrease in the frequency and intensity of the migraine headaches. Her primary expectation of getting a drug-free treatment for her migraine problem was fulfilled to a great extent as she stopped taking medicine, when she got 60% decrease in the intensity of the pain after the session of age-regression with therapeutic-interview. According to her verbatim report, she was able to perform better academically as due to the decrement in the intensity and the frequency of the headache, now she is better able to concentrate during studies and also finds studies more interesting.