The recovery of unmedicated schizophrenics did not prove that schizophrenia is a psychological and not a biological illness. It proved that biology responds intimately and immediately to one’s surroundings and to the treatment that can be provided in that environment. The facilitation of labor with behavioral methods and the prevention of labor complications with hypnosis similarly showed that psychology and biology are two sides of the same river.
Native American medicine people never lost this “primitive” understanding so common in traditional and pre-literate cultures, that mind, body, spirit, and community are one, that are modern boundaries between self and others, self and nature, self and spirit are artificial constructions of a restricted materialistic vision.
Some scientists are now discovering these truths of our ancestors.[1] Dr. Elisabeth Targ, clinical director of psychosocial oncology research at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, conducted a study of 20, randomly selected, severely ill, AIDS patients. Half were prayed for by traditional folk healers; half were not. None were told which group they were assigned to. The results were positive for the prayed-for group, even with that small sample size.
Dr. Jeffrey Levin of Eastern Virginia Medical School and Dr. David Larson, of the National Institute for Healthcare Research, have found over 200 studies in the existing medical literature proving the value of spiritual healing. These include a 1995 study from Dartmouth University showing that one of the best predictors of survival among open-heart surgery patients was the degree to which they said they drew comfort and strength from religious faith. Those who did not had three times the death rate of those who did.
Churchgoers had lower blood pressures than non-churchgoers, men and women who regularly attended church had half the risk of dying of coronary artery disease as non-churchgoers, elderly who attended church or workshipped at home were less depressed and physically healthier than non-worshipping counterparts, elderly hip fracture patients who regarded God as a source of strength and comfort and who attended religious services were able to walk farther on hospital discharge and had less depression than those who did not, to name a few of the findings. Each study took into account other contributing factors that could have offered alternative explanations. The benefits of religion held up even for cigarette smokers.
[1] Wallis C. Time Magazine, June 24, 1996, pp. 59-62.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Bipolar Disorder -- more work in process
The green grass hills seemed to stretch forever, limited only by the bright blue horizon. It was not hard to imagine those hills covered with bison while eagles circled overhead. Through the dissolving morning mist, we could still an eagle gliding on the heat currents above us, though no bison would appear. We had come to Nick Standing Bear’s spread for sun dance. One year ago I had brought Anna to see Nick. She had never left. I looked forward to seeing her again, having kept in touch by letter, and having seen her twice during the year at other ceremonies.
Anna had come to me in Pittsburgh. She was part black, part Cherokee, a product of slavery times in the Deep South. Anna had been hospitalized every two years for as long as she could remember. She had been tried on every medication known to psychiatry. All gave her side effects, some life-threatening.
Anna had what we call bipolar disorder. This used to be called manic-depression. The term implies extreme ranges of mood, from elation to the deepest of depression. Unfortunately for them, bipolar patients spend 85% of their time being depressed. And, unfortunately, when they became elated, they can become sufficiently bizarre to become hospitalized or jailed. The elation is not without its associated consequences. Anna became paranoid and hypervigilant, ever searching for threat. She felt pressured to talk, but would reveal too much, making everyone uncomfortable around her. When her mania became extreme, she would become psychotic, misinterpreting the world around her and its intentions so severely that she would end up in restraints in a psychiatric hospital. She bitterly described her trauma of being tied up and secluded. The mental health care system was brutal to her. She came to me because she wanted an alternative. She felt herself getting paranoid, she knew something had to be done. She didn’t want more medication. Her past doctors had been encouraging a drug called Clozaril,
Anna illustrates an important narrative principle also spoken by indigenous knowledge keepers – that knowledge is the outcome of interactions and relationships between the inquirers and participants. Here is the radical difference in views – that there is no a priori,pre-set way to “treat” bipolar disorder; there is only a conversation among specific people that generates knowledge about how things work for those people. The biomedical paradigm diagnoses bipolar disorder through applying a set of criteria in cookbook fashion. Then it generates a list of medications to be applied, also in cookbook fashion. Narrative approaches, on the other hand, generate action plans unique to the people creating them. Biomedicine takes DSM-IV-TR as real and essential. A narrative approach does not avoid it, but, rather, recognizes it as one way of specifying similarities and differences among people, which is somewhat arbitrary, and which can be replaced by multiple other ways. Applying DSM is a process like applying any other categorization system. I personally prefer three-dimensional SPECT scans as generating a more reliable story about which medications might be useful. On the other hand, it is within my repertoire of stories, to recognize that the social environment can radically change the brain and that patterns of neuronal activity, even as found on a SPECT scan, are socially constructed. Without relationship, we would have a useless brain for it would not have matured. Our social relationships can change dendritic connections within the nervous system, can change regional blood flow and metabolism, and can transform the story we tell about who we think we are.
Social Psychologist A.T. Abma (2000) writes that our “interactions and relationships are shaped by dynamic socio-political processes and go through conflicts and impasses.” Thus, the relationships of conventional psychiatrists and people labelled as having bipolar disorder are different from those of us on the periphery – in the outskirts of culture, in the margins where social change begins. I would go as far as to say that our people who get labelled as bipolar quickly become different from their people as a result of the social interaction. The quality of what we learn and come to know depends on the quality of the relational process through which we learn it. .
Conflict is inevitable in relationship, especially with those who have earned the bipolar label. Conflict is more th the absence of consensus but rather the negation or exclusion of "otherness. " I want to tell a story about coming to that realization with a family.
Erin (change name before completion) was a thirty-five year old woman who had lived a fairly ordinary life (with the exception of what was called a manic episode in her 20s that resolved) until two years ago when she abruptly ended a 10 year relationship to be with a man she met on the internet who turned out to be married and have two children. The family’s story about Erin was that she realized too late that this man was unavailable and broke down over the pain of loss of the past relationship and her anticipated future relationship. She had been hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She had been started on medications meant to “treat” this disorder, and none had worked. Erin’s psychiatrist sent her to me when she took maternity leave, but I gathered from subtle hints in her notes (between the lines, so to speak) that she was glad to pass Erin along, since Erin wasn’t responding to her ministrations.
At first, I liked the family’s interpretation of Erin’s story, but I slowly became aware that Erin detested this interpretation. She felt it trivialized her struggles and her pain. She believed that she had been meant to be the Vampire Queen, to ascend to sit at the right hand of God as his Queen. At the last minute, she had been punished by being made to live among the undead (the rest of us) due to her selfishness. When the time came to be called, she had been too selfish and had been tossed aside. She was waiting for an angel to come to take her to her rightful place in the cosmos, which involved dying to eternal life. I thought of Jukka Altoonen at first, and how he would work so hard to bring this story around to one that was more ordinary. I tried that approach, but Erin was insulted by it and accused me of conspiring with her family to torture her. That was when I realized that we had to respect and work within Erin’s story. A colleague suggested that we begin with the notion of time. Perhaps Erin’s sitting by the front window, watching through the glass for her angel, was unrealistic. Perhaps Erin’s sense of time was off. Perhaps she would have to busy herself to make her prison better since angels might not come for 20 years. Since she didn’t want to have an accidental death (to choke or drown or otherwise die through non-ascension), she would have to look toward her physical world for a while. This was a better strategy. It also revealed the family conflict. Everyone (including me at first) was trying to deny the reality of the “otherness” of Erin. We wanted her to make sense in our world of ordinary soap opera drama. We wanted to bring her down from her Wagnerian operatic world into our sordid high schoolish dramas. She refused to be dislodged.
When we acknowledged Erin’s otherness, what emerged was the exhaustion of family members from the work of trying to change her. Within the consultation group in which this family presented itself, the recommendation was to surrender, to stop trying to change Erin, to leave her alone unless she became imminently dangerous to herself. Then the proper course of action would be to call the police to intervene. Otherwise, we were to accept her edict – that she is God and therefore is in control of her destiny. Members of the consultation group offered to pray for Erin and for the family. A suggestion was made for everyone to write letters to God; that they could be given to Erin as origami hangings, like Sodaka’s thousand cranes for world peace in Hiroshima, Japan. A member of the group told about praying for her daughter for 20 years before her daughter found a way out of alcohol and drug problems. “God works slowly,” she said. “Maybe 20 years is not long to God,”she added, reinforcing what we had told Erin – that she might need to revise her timeframe for angelic ascension. We encouraged the family to get their life back and to acknowledge Erin’s fundamental differentness from them. She was not speaking in metaphor or parable. She was telling her story as she experienced it.
My desire to become a psychiatrist began with reading R. D. Laing while still in high school. Laing illuminated the world of madness for me by showing its meaning. For him, psychiatrists and psychotherapists should facilitate the individual, family, and society becoming more aware of emotional, experiential, and existential needs in a way that increased meaning and authenticity. Psychotherapy should improve quality of life and allow individuals to live within families and societies in a life-affirming manner. Madness was a creative response to living within insane conditions and impossible families and cultures. Life within these contexts was ubearable. Madness allowed that unbearable emotion to leak out and be expressed even if cryptically and in gibberish. Laing explained why madness was often found in the more intelligent patients. They were able to comprehend the impossibility of their lives, generating all the more suffering and desire to communicate their condition. The goal of his psychotherapy and psychiatry was to legitimatize and validate experience, allowing his patients to reconstruct and recathect a sense of worth and meaning for their lives within a more sane context.
Experience is important in the life of an individual. How we use our own self and our humanity is an important aspect of diagnosis and treatment. Treatment must manage the anxiety arising from empathy. It must stay afloat upon the tumultuous seas of the shared experience of intense, profound human emotion. Laing’s psychiatry emphasized the use of self instead of biochemicals, the use of one’s own authenticity in a community healing effort.
During medical school, as I began to study my Native American heritage, I discovered that traditional medicine people treated insanity very much like R.D. Laing, but with one essential difference. Their treatment was much more compassionate and supportive than Laing who seemed to sometimes leave his patients adrift in their unmanageable emotions with little direction and few guideposts.
Through the philosophy of the seven directions, a safe path for life could always be found. Through the intervention of the Spirits and the Divine, impossible affect could be contained. Through their reliance upon the Sacred, medicine people could work miracles, quietly disclaiming responsibility, achieving a kind of transparency so that the credit for their work passed through them and on the Spirits who stood behind them.
Native American medicine people seemed more able to work within the domain of intense emotions experienced by those suffering profound mental disorders. These are the profound emotions of major life experiences and transitions. They are the profound emotions stirred up and activated by ceremonies. These emotions profoundly affect the entire family and community, and, are the fuel driving therapeutic change.
Intense life events open portals into the intense emotional world which we humans are capable of entering yet so rarely do. It is the same profound emotional experience that occurs whenever intense and exhuastive work gives birth to a new sense of integration.
In Coyote Medicine I wrote about my introduction to obstetrics through the birth of my daughter, Sorrel. My anxiety about home birth catalyzed a search and discovery that birth is one of the most intense emotional experiences humans can encounter. The power and intensity of birth are unequaled. Then I found a passage from Laing about midwives making the best mental health workers. Whenever possible, Laing recruited midwives to live and work in his London homes for people with schizophrenia and other psychoses. He believed that midwives were best prepared to handle the intense emotions part and parcel to recovery from insanity.
Having experienced birth, this now made sense. During the hours of labor, women live through intense sensations, perceived as pain by many, coupled with intense emotions, sometimes of fear and panic. My wife, Morgaine, a most artful midwife, showed me how she transformed these many possible negative feelings and sensations into a positive and successful birth experience, one that is immensely gratifying to the women and families involved. This skill is the same as what is required to sit with the insane as they reconstitute a self. It is the skill necessary to lead the lost soul through the descent into Hades, to steal that soul back from the dead, and to re-create a life in the living present. What differs is the intermittent nature of birth contractions and its finite length compared to the constant duration of the unbearable affect of psychosis and its potentially infinite duration.
It is this intense emotionality that we as a society so often defend against by delegating institutions, such as hospitals, to deal with life’s profound transitions of birth and death. It is the reclamation of emotional experience that both facilitates a positive birth and allows the mad to become whole again.
Experiencing the natural processes of life, such as birth, is a way of experiencing ourselves as human beings, becoming aware of our own strength within the meaning of life which lies in the primacy and intimacy of personal experience, and personal responsibility for our experience.
Birth, death, and rebirth are classic themes for humanity. To be aware of this is to increase our ability to use these energies to facilitate our own growth and expansion as individuals, families, and societies. Birth and psychosis both present incredible opportunities for psychological growth and development that we should not avoid.
I had wanted to become a psychiatrist to lead patients through the Purgatory of madness. Instead I found myself more often, in my early medical career, working with pregnant women. Through my clinical experience and research, I discovered that women’s powerful emotions of fear or anxiety affected their body’s physiological process of giving birth. Powerful emotions could stop labor or prevent it from starting. Cathartic or healing emotional experience could remove those blocks and allow the process to continue. The family within which the birth occurred have much bearing on how labor would proceed. The more constricted and repressed the family, the more difficult labor could be. Context affected physiology, just as it affects the brain and its neurochemicals and transmitters in schizophrenia.
Birth and labor are particularly intense emotional experiences of magnificent focus which unfold in the unique style of the individual woman giving birth. This style is constructed from the woman’s life attitudes and beliefs about herself. These beliefs and attitudes exist within the context of family relationships,the couple’s relationship where one exists, and any active support systems. Each woman gives birth differently and originally. No two births are alike. Just as each woman is unique and lives life in her own style, so is she in how she births her children.
Similarly no two madnesses are the same, despite DSM-IV. The meaning of madness cannot be found in chemicals or diagnostic nomenclature. Each madness has its own unique meaning which can only unfold within the context of the person’s life who lives that madness, and only becomes understandable by seeing the person against the backdrop of his family and community. Just as each woman gives birth in her own style, each individual recovers from insanity in her own manner. The midwife is more the shepherdess of the energy of healing, keeping the process moving, than deciding where it shall go. Though it is also her responsibility to make sure the flock arrives at a destination and does not fall off the cliff on the way. These are the Native American metaphors of working with insanity: the idea of leading the sheep to greener, higher mountain pastures in the summer, of bringing them down from the high country before the first snows of winter. The Navajo or Dineh shepherd is one of our best teachers of the art of psychotherapy.
Birth is an event to which a laboring woman relates intimately and uniquely, weaving a learning experience all her own. For a woman, birthing itself can be delicately balanced point in time of terrific impact couched within the developing framework of motherhood.
Psychosis and its recovery is often similarly a unique time in which a person shatters and can put together the pieces, learning how to be an entirely different self. Psychosis often occurs at times of developmental shifts, such as the adolescent transition to adulthood or the child’s transition to adolescence. Recovering these periods and shepherding the person through this developmental epoch is like taking them through labor.
Through birth a woman travels from mothering on a purely biological and cellular level, relatively free of conscious effort, while nurturing a developing fetus, to mothering on a conscious, deliberate level of raising a newborn to adulthood. The point of birth is a meeting place of intuitive body knowledge and conscious, logical, mind process. The body knows how to give birth, the mind learns from it, and with the aid of body hormones, a woman proceeds to mother a child consciously and deliberately. After birth, the mother may still need to feed the baby with nutrients from her body, but she does so by deliberately putting the baby to the breast, rather than unconsciously through her placenta, as in pregnancy. This meeting of body and mind during birth creates and releases enormous energy for growth, as it is an opening through which a new soul is born and new relationships are begun. These family relationships continue to expand personal possibilties for infinite variations of psychologial growth, change, and development.
When severe mental illness hits just as when birth breaks down and Cesareans and other interventions become necessary, this meeting of intuitive body wisdom with affect and memory becomes disturbed. Physiology fails to function adequately. The uterus will not contract rhythmically and forcibly. The neurotransmitters falter and dissipate. In each case our interventions are just as brutal -- Cesareans, forceps, vacuum extractors, and intravenous hormone drips versus the chemical straight jackets of the phenothiazines.
Over 20 years ago neuroscientists at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California at San Francisco, convincingly showed in a random assignment study at a state mental hospital (Agnews State Hospital in San José), that new onset schizophrenia could be effectively treated without medication. The unmedicated patients remained in the hospital longer (up to 6 months), but less than 10% had future breakdowns that required re-hospitalizaiton. The medicated patients left the hospital sooner, but 90% had future breakdowns that resulted in chronic rehospitalization and disability.
Similarly, my colleages and I, showed in a number of studies that hypnosis, psychotherapy, and other techniques of behavioral medicine, could be used to help women at risk have normal births.
Anna had come to me in Pittsburgh. She was part black, part Cherokee, a product of slavery times in the Deep South. Anna had been hospitalized every two years for as long as she could remember. She had been tried on every medication known to psychiatry. All gave her side effects, some life-threatening.
Anna had what we call bipolar disorder. This used to be called manic-depression. The term implies extreme ranges of mood, from elation to the deepest of depression. Unfortunately for them, bipolar patients spend 85% of their time being depressed. And, unfortunately, when they became elated, they can become sufficiently bizarre to become hospitalized or jailed. The elation is not without its associated consequences. Anna became paranoid and hypervigilant, ever searching for threat. She felt pressured to talk, but would reveal too much, making everyone uncomfortable around her. When her mania became extreme, she would become psychotic, misinterpreting the world around her and its intentions so severely that she would end up in restraints in a psychiatric hospital. She bitterly described her trauma of being tied up and secluded. The mental health care system was brutal to her. She came to me because she wanted an alternative. She felt herself getting paranoid, she knew something had to be done. She didn’t want more medication. Her past doctors had been encouraging a drug called Clozaril,
Anna illustrates an important narrative principle also spoken by indigenous knowledge keepers – that knowledge is the outcome of interactions and relationships between the inquirers and participants. Here is the radical difference in views – that there is no a priori,pre-set way to “treat” bipolar disorder; there is only a conversation among specific people that generates knowledge about how things work for those people. The biomedical paradigm diagnoses bipolar disorder through applying a set of criteria in cookbook fashion. Then it generates a list of medications to be applied, also in cookbook fashion. Narrative approaches, on the other hand, generate action plans unique to the people creating them. Biomedicine takes DSM-IV-TR as real and essential. A narrative approach does not avoid it, but, rather, recognizes it as one way of specifying similarities and differences among people, which is somewhat arbitrary, and which can be replaced by multiple other ways. Applying DSM is a process like applying any other categorization system. I personally prefer three-dimensional SPECT scans as generating a more reliable story about which medications might be useful. On the other hand, it is within my repertoire of stories, to recognize that the social environment can radically change the brain and that patterns of neuronal activity, even as found on a SPECT scan, are socially constructed. Without relationship, we would have a useless brain for it would not have matured. Our social relationships can change dendritic connections within the nervous system, can change regional blood flow and metabolism, and can transform the story we tell about who we think we are.
Social Psychologist A.T. Abma (2000) writes that our “interactions and relationships are shaped by dynamic socio-political processes and go through conflicts and impasses.” Thus, the relationships of conventional psychiatrists and people labelled as having bipolar disorder are different from those of us on the periphery – in the outskirts of culture, in the margins where social change begins. I would go as far as to say that our people who get labelled as bipolar quickly become different from their people as a result of the social interaction. The quality of what we learn and come to know depends on the quality of the relational process through which we learn it. .
Conflict is inevitable in relationship, especially with those who have earned the bipolar label. Conflict is more th the absence of consensus but rather the negation or exclusion of "otherness. " I want to tell a story about coming to that realization with a family.
Erin (change name before completion) was a thirty-five year old woman who had lived a fairly ordinary life (with the exception of what was called a manic episode in her 20s that resolved) until two years ago when she abruptly ended a 10 year relationship to be with a man she met on the internet who turned out to be married and have two children. The family’s story about Erin was that she realized too late that this man was unavailable and broke down over the pain of loss of the past relationship and her anticipated future relationship. She had been hospitalized and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She had been started on medications meant to “treat” this disorder, and none had worked. Erin’s psychiatrist sent her to me when she took maternity leave, but I gathered from subtle hints in her notes (between the lines, so to speak) that she was glad to pass Erin along, since Erin wasn’t responding to her ministrations.
At first, I liked the family’s interpretation of Erin’s story, but I slowly became aware that Erin detested this interpretation. She felt it trivialized her struggles and her pain. She believed that she had been meant to be the Vampire Queen, to ascend to sit at the right hand of God as his Queen. At the last minute, she had been punished by being made to live among the undead (the rest of us) due to her selfishness. When the time came to be called, she had been too selfish and had been tossed aside. She was waiting for an angel to come to take her to her rightful place in the cosmos, which involved dying to eternal life. I thought of Jukka Altoonen at first, and how he would work so hard to bring this story around to one that was more ordinary. I tried that approach, but Erin was insulted by it and accused me of conspiring with her family to torture her. That was when I realized that we had to respect and work within Erin’s story. A colleague suggested that we begin with the notion of time. Perhaps Erin’s sitting by the front window, watching through the glass for her angel, was unrealistic. Perhaps Erin’s sense of time was off. Perhaps she would have to busy herself to make her prison better since angels might not come for 20 years. Since she didn’t want to have an accidental death (to choke or drown or otherwise die through non-ascension), she would have to look toward her physical world for a while. This was a better strategy. It also revealed the family conflict. Everyone (including me at first) was trying to deny the reality of the “otherness” of Erin. We wanted her to make sense in our world of ordinary soap opera drama. We wanted to bring her down from her Wagnerian operatic world into our sordid high schoolish dramas. She refused to be dislodged.
When we acknowledged Erin’s otherness, what emerged was the exhaustion of family members from the work of trying to change her. Within the consultation group in which this family presented itself, the recommendation was to surrender, to stop trying to change Erin, to leave her alone unless she became imminently dangerous to herself. Then the proper course of action would be to call the police to intervene. Otherwise, we were to accept her edict – that she is God and therefore is in control of her destiny. Members of the consultation group offered to pray for Erin and for the family. A suggestion was made for everyone to write letters to God; that they could be given to Erin as origami hangings, like Sodaka’s thousand cranes for world peace in Hiroshima, Japan. A member of the group told about praying for her daughter for 20 years before her daughter found a way out of alcohol and drug problems. “God works slowly,” she said. “Maybe 20 years is not long to God,”she added, reinforcing what we had told Erin – that she might need to revise her timeframe for angelic ascension. We encouraged the family to get their life back and to acknowledge Erin’s fundamental differentness from them. She was not speaking in metaphor or parable. She was telling her story as she experienced it.
My desire to become a psychiatrist began with reading R. D. Laing while still in high school. Laing illuminated the world of madness for me by showing its meaning. For him, psychiatrists and psychotherapists should facilitate the individual, family, and society becoming more aware of emotional, experiential, and existential needs in a way that increased meaning and authenticity. Psychotherapy should improve quality of life and allow individuals to live within families and societies in a life-affirming manner. Madness was a creative response to living within insane conditions and impossible families and cultures. Life within these contexts was ubearable. Madness allowed that unbearable emotion to leak out and be expressed even if cryptically and in gibberish. Laing explained why madness was often found in the more intelligent patients. They were able to comprehend the impossibility of their lives, generating all the more suffering and desire to communicate their condition. The goal of his psychotherapy and psychiatry was to legitimatize and validate experience, allowing his patients to reconstruct and recathect a sense of worth and meaning for their lives within a more sane context.
Experience is important in the life of an individual. How we use our own self and our humanity is an important aspect of diagnosis and treatment. Treatment must manage the anxiety arising from empathy. It must stay afloat upon the tumultuous seas of the shared experience of intense, profound human emotion. Laing’s psychiatry emphasized the use of self instead of biochemicals, the use of one’s own authenticity in a community healing effort.
During medical school, as I began to study my Native American heritage, I discovered that traditional medicine people treated insanity very much like R.D. Laing, but with one essential difference. Their treatment was much more compassionate and supportive than Laing who seemed to sometimes leave his patients adrift in their unmanageable emotions with little direction and few guideposts.
Through the philosophy of the seven directions, a safe path for life could always be found. Through the intervention of the Spirits and the Divine, impossible affect could be contained. Through their reliance upon the Sacred, medicine people could work miracles, quietly disclaiming responsibility, achieving a kind of transparency so that the credit for their work passed through them and on the Spirits who stood behind them.
Native American medicine people seemed more able to work within the domain of intense emotions experienced by those suffering profound mental disorders. These are the profound emotions of major life experiences and transitions. They are the profound emotions stirred up and activated by ceremonies. These emotions profoundly affect the entire family and community, and, are the fuel driving therapeutic change.
Intense life events open portals into the intense emotional world which we humans are capable of entering yet so rarely do. It is the same profound emotional experience that occurs whenever intense and exhuastive work gives birth to a new sense of integration.
In Coyote Medicine I wrote about my introduction to obstetrics through the birth of my daughter, Sorrel. My anxiety about home birth catalyzed a search and discovery that birth is one of the most intense emotional experiences humans can encounter. The power and intensity of birth are unequaled. Then I found a passage from Laing about midwives making the best mental health workers. Whenever possible, Laing recruited midwives to live and work in his London homes for people with schizophrenia and other psychoses. He believed that midwives were best prepared to handle the intense emotions part and parcel to recovery from insanity.
Having experienced birth, this now made sense. During the hours of labor, women live through intense sensations, perceived as pain by many, coupled with intense emotions, sometimes of fear and panic. My wife, Morgaine, a most artful midwife, showed me how she transformed these many possible negative feelings and sensations into a positive and successful birth experience, one that is immensely gratifying to the women and families involved. This skill is the same as what is required to sit with the insane as they reconstitute a self. It is the skill necessary to lead the lost soul through the descent into Hades, to steal that soul back from the dead, and to re-create a life in the living present. What differs is the intermittent nature of birth contractions and its finite length compared to the constant duration of the unbearable affect of psychosis and its potentially infinite duration.
It is this intense emotionality that we as a society so often defend against by delegating institutions, such as hospitals, to deal with life’s profound transitions of birth and death. It is the reclamation of emotional experience that both facilitates a positive birth and allows the mad to become whole again.
Experiencing the natural processes of life, such as birth, is a way of experiencing ourselves as human beings, becoming aware of our own strength within the meaning of life which lies in the primacy and intimacy of personal experience, and personal responsibility for our experience.
Birth, death, and rebirth are classic themes for humanity. To be aware of this is to increase our ability to use these energies to facilitate our own growth and expansion as individuals, families, and societies. Birth and psychosis both present incredible opportunities for psychological growth and development that we should not avoid.
I had wanted to become a psychiatrist to lead patients through the Purgatory of madness. Instead I found myself more often, in my early medical career, working with pregnant women. Through my clinical experience and research, I discovered that women’s powerful emotions of fear or anxiety affected their body’s physiological process of giving birth. Powerful emotions could stop labor or prevent it from starting. Cathartic or healing emotional experience could remove those blocks and allow the process to continue. The family within which the birth occurred have much bearing on how labor would proceed. The more constricted and repressed the family, the more difficult labor could be. Context affected physiology, just as it affects the brain and its neurochemicals and transmitters in schizophrenia.
Birth and labor are particularly intense emotional experiences of magnificent focus which unfold in the unique style of the individual woman giving birth. This style is constructed from the woman’s life attitudes and beliefs about herself. These beliefs and attitudes exist within the context of family relationships,the couple’s relationship where one exists, and any active support systems. Each woman gives birth differently and originally. No two births are alike. Just as each woman is unique and lives life in her own style, so is she in how she births her children.
Similarly no two madnesses are the same, despite DSM-IV. The meaning of madness cannot be found in chemicals or diagnostic nomenclature. Each madness has its own unique meaning which can only unfold within the context of the person’s life who lives that madness, and only becomes understandable by seeing the person against the backdrop of his family and community. Just as each woman gives birth in her own style, each individual recovers from insanity in her own manner. The midwife is more the shepherdess of the energy of healing, keeping the process moving, than deciding where it shall go. Though it is also her responsibility to make sure the flock arrives at a destination and does not fall off the cliff on the way. These are the Native American metaphors of working with insanity: the idea of leading the sheep to greener, higher mountain pastures in the summer, of bringing them down from the high country before the first snows of winter. The Navajo or Dineh shepherd is one of our best teachers of the art of psychotherapy.
Birth is an event to which a laboring woman relates intimately and uniquely, weaving a learning experience all her own. For a woman, birthing itself can be delicately balanced point in time of terrific impact couched within the developing framework of motherhood.
Psychosis and its recovery is often similarly a unique time in which a person shatters and can put together the pieces, learning how to be an entirely different self. Psychosis often occurs at times of developmental shifts, such as the adolescent transition to adulthood or the child’s transition to adolescence. Recovering these periods and shepherding the person through this developmental epoch is like taking them through labor.
Through birth a woman travels from mothering on a purely biological and cellular level, relatively free of conscious effort, while nurturing a developing fetus, to mothering on a conscious, deliberate level of raising a newborn to adulthood. The point of birth is a meeting place of intuitive body knowledge and conscious, logical, mind process. The body knows how to give birth, the mind learns from it, and with the aid of body hormones, a woman proceeds to mother a child consciously and deliberately. After birth, the mother may still need to feed the baby with nutrients from her body, but she does so by deliberately putting the baby to the breast, rather than unconsciously through her placenta, as in pregnancy. This meeting of body and mind during birth creates and releases enormous energy for growth, as it is an opening through which a new soul is born and new relationships are begun. These family relationships continue to expand personal possibilties for infinite variations of psychologial growth, change, and development.
When severe mental illness hits just as when birth breaks down and Cesareans and other interventions become necessary, this meeting of intuitive body wisdom with affect and memory becomes disturbed. Physiology fails to function adequately. The uterus will not contract rhythmically and forcibly. The neurotransmitters falter and dissipate. In each case our interventions are just as brutal -- Cesareans, forceps, vacuum extractors, and intravenous hormone drips versus the chemical straight jackets of the phenothiazines.
Over 20 years ago neuroscientists at the Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute of the University of California at San Francisco, convincingly showed in a random assignment study at a state mental hospital (Agnews State Hospital in San José), that new onset schizophrenia could be effectively treated without medication. The unmedicated patients remained in the hospital longer (up to 6 months), but less than 10% had future breakdowns that required re-hospitalizaiton. The medicated patients left the hospital sooner, but 90% had future breakdowns that resulted in chronic rehospitalization and disability.
Similarly, my colleages and I, showed in a number of studies that hypnosis, psychotherapy, and other techniques of behavioral medicine, could be used to help women at risk have normal births.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hypnosis and Birth Study American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 2004
Here's the study from which I wrote the previous hypnosis and birth paper for Mothering.
Lewis
Hypnosis to Facilitate Normal Birth
Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona, M.D., Ph.D.
Center for Complementary Medicine
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
and
Department of Family Practice
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Running Head: Psychosocial Variables and Birth
Key words: Fear, Birth, Birth complications, Cesarean, Anxiety, Stress, Social Support
This research was supported in part by Resources for World Health, Inc., San Francisco, California; the contributions of an anonymous individual private donor from Tucson, and by the United States Air Force. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not reflect opinion or official policy of the United States Air Force or the Department of Defense.
Address communication and reprint requests to Dr. Mehl at the Center for Complementary Medicine, Shadyside Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 5230 Centre Ave., SON Bldg., Rm 216, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Voice: 412-623-1365, fax: 412-623-1029. E-mail: madronalm@ssh.edu and/or mmadrona@aol.com.
ABSTRACT
Background: Prior research by the author showed that psychosocial factors distinguished abnormal from normal birth outcome. The purpose of this study was to determine if prenatal hypnosis could facilitate normal birth.
Methods:
Results: The use of hypnotherapy significantly inhibited negative emotional factors from being related to abnormal birth outcome.
Conclusions: Attention to reducing the impact of adverse psychosocial risk factors through the prenatal use of hypnosis did improve outcome.
INTRODUCTION
In these days of health care reform, an important opportunity exists to explore the utility of psychosocial interventions in improving birth outcome. These interventions are often less expensive than medical procedures and can be provided by non-physicians. One of these interventions is hypnosis.
Labor length and analgesic use have been reported to be decreased when hypnosis is done during pregnancy. [1] Anxiety about and during birth is decreased. [2] The incidence of postpartum depression is lessened.[3], [4] Increased self-confidence, increased calmness during labor, and easier transition into breast feeding has been described.[5] Decreased pain sensation has been reported.[6], [7], [8], [9], [10] Reductions have occurred in the number of complicated births.[11] Babies born have had higher Apgar scores.[12] Hypnosis subjects experienced greater belonging and security during labor, were less afraid of birth, and perceived birth more as a positive event.[13] Hypnosis helped women to be more relaxed during labor and birth, reduced hyperventilation, and increased feelings of participation and mastery.[14] A psychosocial intervention program that included hypnosis reduced the number of cesarean deliveries and oxytocin augmentations or inductions.[15]
Only one published report showed no improvement over Lamaze technique from the addition of hypnosis, though both LaMaze and hypnosis alone lessened pain equally during labor.[16]
Hypnosis has been reported helpful in the conversion of the breech presentation to vertex[17] and in the treatment of premature labor.[18]
The purpose of this research was to address the question of whether high stress and low social support contributed to birth complications and to determine if hypnosis would protect the high stress-low social support woman from developing birth complications.METHODS
Settings and sources of subjects: The author practiced holistic medicine in San Francisco, California, and, later, Tucson, Arizona. As part of this practice, he provided prenatal hypnosis. Two hundred sixty subjects in the first or second trimester of pregnancy were referred for prenatal hypnosis and included in this study. These patients paid for their visits, or their insurance was billed. Data obtained from the was initially obtained for clinical purposes. Referrals came from family phyicians, obstetricians, naturopathic physicians, and midwives practicing in these areas. Patients seen for their first appointment during the third trimester of pregnancy were not included in this study because the author feared that insufficient time would exist to conduct a thorough evaluation and to provide sufficient treatment to alter birth outcome. (Challenging this belief should be the topic of another study.)
During that same time, the author recruited subjects from these same groups of physicians and midwives for a study of psychosocial factors in the prediction of obstetrical risk. These subjects were told that information was needed from them to study how best to predict risk in childbirth. Subjects were paid for completion of questionnaires and for being interviewed. Informed consent was obtained and the study was approved by the author’s Institutional Review Board. Matched, comparison subjects were obtained from this cohort of subjects, who were not referred for hypnosis. Bias was expected to be against the hypnosis subjects, since 1) they came from the same groups of health care providers, and 2), their providers had not identified them as having special needs which could be addressed by hypnosis. There were approximately 2000 subjects from which to match for the comparison group.
Assessment: A complete medical and psychosocial history was obtained from all subjects, including: (1) Demographic information, (2) Complete family medical history, (3) Ob/gyn health history, (4) Psychosocial history, (5) Past medical history, and (6) Review of current symptoms.
The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory was administered, along with the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. The couple was interviewed whenever possible. The woman was assessed for her relationship to her body, awareness of body symptoms and patterns of body tension. The scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale were normalized to a 0 to 1 scale, as the scores on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. That scale was oriented so that higher scores meant greater marital satisfaction. The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory was assessed over the preceding 3 years.
Couples were interviewed whenever possible and during that interview, information was solicited from which an assessment of the couple's beliefs, experiences, expectations and affective states was made. Assessment was also made of the women's stressors, fears and social support. Interview formats and questions are present as Appendix A.
Matching: Subjects in the comparison group were matched with subjects in the hypnosis group so that their values lay within the same intervals defined below:
a) Age: 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40+
b) Socioeconomic status: No insurance, Medicaid, Commercial insurance or HMO, highest level private commercial insurance (ratings of insurance as average or high level was made by the author’s hospital’s billing department independent of this study).
c) Obstetrical risk (defined by the POPRAS system from Harbor General -- UCLA): Low, medium, high.
d) Marital status: Unmarried, married, separated, divorced (at the time of initial interview).
e) Education: Less than 12 years, high school graduate, junior college or college courses, college graduate, graduate courses, graduate degree.
f) Parity: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4+.
Evaluation: Initial interviews aimed to establish close rapport with each subject, so that feelings, fears and complaints could be freely expressed. Interviews usually lasted two hours. Information about the woman's past and current reactions toward herself, her family, partner, work, social, religious and physical experience was elicited. Her knowledge of the physiology of pregnancy and birth, her menstrual experience, family patterns of pregnancy and birth, changes in sexual relationships, attitudes toward body changes, the baby, nursing, and general experiences of pregnancy and birth were assessed.
Note was made of shifts in attitudes and reactions indicated by changes in tempo and intensity of verbalizations, slips of the tongue, innuendo, facial expression, vasomotor activity and tone of voice. Physiological monitoring was included when possible and changes in blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature and muscle tension were noted when associated with specific subject matter.
The interest or capacity of each woman for participation varied. Some had but little experience thinking about themselves or that which had happened to them and expressed themselves poorly. Some subjects who verbalized poorly gave crucial, pertinent material once encouraged to talk about themselves. Others were defensive and produced scanty material.
These interviews represented different experiences to different patients. To most, they gave a much needed feeling of being an individual in whom others were interested. To a few, the interviews were simply an opportunity to be a part of a study, and to a couple of women, the interviews provided a serious threat. Most of the patients, however, soon came to regard the interview as a helpful experience--an opportunity to talk about anxieties and problems.
Observations of the prenatal care provider were elicited by telephone interview or a data form sent in the mail. Obstetric data and all physical examination findings during the course of pregnancy and childbirth were abstracted from prenatal care records, requested after delivery (the woman signed a records release form during the initial interview). Every effort was made to learn as much as possible about the patients in terms of their psychological functioning, cultural background and life experiences.
Interview records were examined in accordance with Glaser’s method of grounded theory.[19] In this method, qualitative data is examined with an eye toward data reduction. All possible categories which make sense clinically and theoretically are applied to the data. Categories are tabulated and reviewed. Categories are collapsed and combined when possible and logical to obtain a limited and manageable number of variables. A continued coding, sorting, and evaluating process eventually results in a data reduction scheme which makes sense and represents what is available in the data.
For example, the statement, "I am afraid of pain in childbirth", was coded as a fear response. Initially it was called “personal fear of birth, then fear of birth, and finally, fear, as categories were combined. By taking the verbal statements, reviewing any descriptions of associated affective expression, a statement could be made about the intensity of the fear. Statements made were rated on a +3 to -3 scale. "I am afraid of pain in childbirth" became a 'Fear' statement, with a numeral rating assigned to represent its intensity. Appendix B lists the final coding format that developed through the grounded theory process.
The final seven categories to arise from the coding process included:
(1) Fear,
(2) Anxiety-stress,
(3) Maternal self-identity
(4) Beliefs,
(5) Psychosocial support from the partner,
(6) Psychosocial support from the mother's mother,
(7) Psychosocial support from friends.
A team of three clinicians assigned responses to the appropriate category and rated the response for intensity . The frequency of occurrence of a specific response and the magnitude or intensity of the responses were sufficient for clinicians to grade responses from -3 to +3 according to the strength of the statement. Comparative adverbs of 'very', 'mildly', etc., were included as indicators of the magnitude of the psychological state. The verbal responses of the women were differentially weighted in the specific content categories in proportion to the assumed intensity represented by statements made and interviewer notes. Values were assigned to all the verbal responses made. One type of direct verbal report of the subjective affective experience, such as, "I am anxious", would be classified in the 'anxiety-stress' category, and have a weighted value of a -2, while the same statement with a greater intensity, " I am very anxious", could be weighted -3. Each of the women's responses were assessed with the value weighted on each variable to develop a profile of her psychological attitude during pregnancy. The sign of the rating (+ or -) was in accordance with the hypothesized relationships of how this factor would affect the birthing process. The descriptors provided were those which worked for the raters to achieve over 85% agreement. They were developed through rating patients together prior to beginning the study. If the raters could not agree through consensus, the average of their ratings was taken and rounded. The inter-rater reliability was checked on every fifth patient and remained above 0.85.
Treatment: If hypnosis were successful it would be expected to prevent patients with many adverse factors from having abnormal birth complications. If hypnosis was not successful it would be expected to have no impact on outcome.
The general approach used for prenatal hypnosis was oriented toward problem-solving and was perceived as brief, not as insight-oriented nor psychoanalytically-based psychotherapy. Goals included increased relaxation, decreased anxiety, increased sense of trust of social support, realistic fear and a feeling of confidence that the woman could cope adequately with the pain of labor. Visualization was used to guide the woman through an imaginary experience of giving birth, thereby decreasing fear and anxiety. Careful notes were made of the interviews. Audio and videotapes of representative hypnosis sessions are available upon request.
The mean number of prenatal interviews was 5. The mode for number of psychosocial sessions was three. The minimum number was one and the maximum, 60. All hypnosis was provided by the author. Subjects in the comparison group were seen for two-three hours total, usually twice.
Outcome variables: A normal birth was defined as one without obstetrical intervention (no Cesarean, no uterine dysfunction, no fetal distress, no low Apgar scores, no infant resuscitation required, etc). Uterine dysfunction was diagnosed when treated by the doctor or midwife with oxytocin augmentation during labor or with induction. Fetal distress was noted when it was recorded on the labor and delivery record. Apgar scores were recorded on the labor and delivery record. Infant resuscitation efforts were described on the labor and delivery record. All of these were obtained from the hospital records, or, for home birth, from the midwife’s birth records.
An abnormal birth, therefore, required the use of obstetrical technology, including Cesareans, induction and augmentation of labor with oxytocin, fetal distress resulting in intervention or fetal scalp sampling, low Apgar scores, and postpartum hemorrhage. An obstetrician and two certified nurse-midwives reviewed each case to assess normal versus abnormal. They were blind to the existence of this study. They agreed on 95% of cases. For the remaining cases, their consensus was accepted. These were borderline cases in which, for example, blood loss was on the borderline of excessive or fetal distress was on the borderline of being excessive.
Data analysis: The T-test procedure and the discriminant analysis procedures from the Systat statistical package for the MacIntosh computer was used. Statistics provided are already corrected using the Bonferoni method for the number of comparisons made. Chi-square tests were used to test statistical signficance of differences between groups. Variables were compared within the total sample of 520 women by actual outcome group. Then comparisons were reconsidered with subjects grouped by the use of hypnosis or not.
RESULTS
Table 1 compares demographics between women having normal births and abnormal births in this sample. No significant differences were expected between women in the hypnosis and the comparison group, since matching procedures were used. Table 1 shows no signficant differences, either, in demographic variables, when women were compared between for actual outcomes. Age of the total sample of patients varied from 18 years to 39 years with an average of 27 years. Years of education ranged from 9 to 19, with an average of 13 years. Fifty-two percent of the women were primigravidous, 24% were secundigravidous, 11% were having their third child, and 13% were pregnant with their fourth or greater child. No significant differences in level of medical risk were found between subjects who had abnormal outcomes versus normal outcomes. No differences were found in the range of distance from place of birth for women in normal and abnormal outcomes.
Contribution of Medical and demographic variables to risk: Table 2 shows no differences in the two groups for members having previous live births, previous abortions and previous miscarriages. Women in the abnormal birth group showed significantly more previous (to the pregnancy) infections, injuries and hospitalizations. These events were not obstetrical or gynecological and did not increase their risk on the Popras Obstetrical Risk Screening Criteria. There were no differences in number of prior surgeries or diagnosed illnesses. Women in the abnormal birth group showed more frequent past drug use. Neither group was using drugs during the pregnancy. Women in the normal birth group were more physically active.
Emotional state variables. Table 3 shows the differences in the emotional state variables. All four variables were significantly different between groups. Women in the abnormal birth group showed more anxiety-stress and fear. Their beliefs were more negative toward birth. They showed less maternal identity.
Table 4 compares the emotional state variables between the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups, grouped for the use or non-use of hypnosis. The comparison group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between anxiety and stress when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of high anxiety-stress who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Fear variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between fear when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences were still present but to a lesser degree when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy appeared to prevent women with high fear who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes, but not to the same extent as for anxiety-stress. A significant difference was still present between women having abnormal births and women having normal births, both of whom received hypnotherapy.
Maternal self-identity variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between maternal identity when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of low maternal identity who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Belief variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed that negative beliefs about birth were significantly associated with abnormal birth outcome. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of women with negative beliefs about birth who received hypnosis from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Depression (BDI). Among the comparison group, increased Beck Depression scores were significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not signficant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of depression on birth outcome. The greater levels of depression in the normals in the hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Among the control group, increased Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale scores was significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not significant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of manifest anxiety on birth outcome. The greater levels of manifest anxiety in the normals in the hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Life Stress Inventory. Among the control group, increased Life Stress Inventory scores were significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not signficant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of high levels of life stress on birth outcome. The greater levels of life stress in the normals in the hypnosis group when compared to normals in the non-hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Social Support Variables. Table 5 shows differences between normal birth outcome women and abnormal birth outcome women on measures of social support. Higher levels of perceived support from the woman's partner (husband, boyfriend, etc.) was signficantly associated with normal birth outcome. Higher levels of perceived support from the woman's own mother was, intriguingly, significantly associated with abnormal birth outcome. Higher levels of support from the woman's friends was statistically significantly associated with normal birth outcome. Higher levels of marital satisfaction as measured by the Dyadic Adjustment Scale was statistically significantly associated with normal birth outcome.
Support from mother's mother. No statistically significant differences or effects were observed.
Support from friends variable. Lower levels of support from friends were associated with abnormal birth in the presence of hypnotherapy than in its absence.
Marital satistaction. For the control group who did not receive hypnotherapy, higher levels of marital satisfaction were associated with normal births, and low levels with abnormal birth. Statistically significantly lower levels of marital satisfaction were still associated with normal birth in the presence of hypnotherapy.
Birth data. In comparing the mean scores between the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups on birth data variables, first stage labor length, Apgar score at 1 minute, and Apgar score at 5 minutes, significant differences were found as would be expected. First stage labor length was shorter, and the Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes were better for the normal birth outcome group than for the abnormal birth outcome group (by definition). No significant differences between the mean scores for the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were found for gestational age, second stage labor length and birthweight, indicating that premature labor did not figure a role in these differences. These results are summarized in Table 6.
Discriminant function analysis was used to correctly classify 91% of the cases correctly into the normal birth outcome group (group N) or the abnormal birth outcome group (group A). Women having normal deliveries were classified correctly with 90.2% accuracy, compared to 92.1% for women having normal births. The canonical correlation was 0.7808 meaning that about eight times out of ten, correct classification occurred. The most significant psychosocial factors were fear and support from the baby's father and drug use. Hypnosis was signficantly associated with normal outcome.
No one particular practice group was significantly associated with abnormal outcomes, suggesting that practitioner practice patterns were sufficiently similar not to contribute to outcome differences. Practitioners who were willing to refer patients for hypnosis or for a study on psychosocial factors affecting risk tended to be more supportive of natural childbirth and had lower intervention rates than their colleagues who would not participate in making such referrals.
DISCUSSION
Examination of the group of women who were evaluated and not offered hypnotherapy revealed that psychosocial variables were related to abnormal birth outcome. Seven major psychosocial variables showed importance to birth problems. These included maternal stress and anxiety, fear, negative beliefs about birth, negative maternal self-identity. Psychosocial support variables of significance included support from the baby's father, support from friends, and marital satisfaction/dissatisfaction as measured with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory was asociated with abnormal birth as was manifest anxiety (Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale), and Life Stress over the past three years (Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory).
Providing hypnosis to women at psychosocial risk (as judged by the above criteria) did seem to help them have a normal birth.
Of surprise was the finding that high levels of support from the woman's mother was associated with abnormal birth outcome. This may indicate that the manner in which we rated this variable keyed more into dependency and passivity, or that women need a different kind of support from their mothers than we imagined in conceptualizing our rating system.
This study shows that a psychosocial intervention program can have a positive effect on birth outcome among women who are having full-term labors. Prenatal providers might do well to incorporate a consideration of psychosocial risk factors during prenatal care and to utilize methods such as hypnosis (or others that may prove effective) to help reduce psychosocial risk during routine prenatal care. This can be done cost-effectively, through utilization of a trained mental health professional. This practitioner can interact with nurses and childbirth educators to improve co-ordination of patient care and provide attention to psychosocial risk. Specifically, psychosocial risk reduction involves:
(1) Identification, acceptance and resolution of fears.
(2) Identification of states of high anxiety-tension, with helping the client learn more effective coping styles.
(3) Identification of negative beliefs about birth and parenting, with provisions for reframing and emotional relearning.
(4) Identification of low maternal identity with anticipatory guidance for the mothering role and hypnotherapy to improve self-esteem.
(5) Consideration of strengths and stresses of the woman's support system. Needed interventions included:
(a) Couple's therapy to decrease stress, increase husband's emotional availability, improve lifestyles, etc.
(b) Individual counseling for the husband to address his unique concerns (when indicated).
(c) Network therapy (environmental intervention with the mother's friends (which can be done in childbirth classes),
(d) Therapy with the mother and her mother to facilitate transition and change of that relationship, and/or,
(e) Helping the woman with no psychosocial support to establish needed relationships and resources.
On a broader level, these findings may presage a time when all medicine is practiced more holistically, with mind-body interventions seen as important. When the way medicine is practiced changes to reflect our new understanding of the interactive nature of all aspects of the patient's life on health and disease, we will have come far.
Table 1. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the demographic variables between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
_____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Demographic variables Mean SD Mean SD t-value
_____________________________________________________________________
Age 27.42 4.64 28.83 5.09 0.45
Years of education 13.83 2.36 14.50 2.53 0.55
Religion 2.23 2.74 2.45 2.69 0.28
Place of birth 3.82 2.19 3.91 2.92 0.52
Marital status 2.17 1.24 2.30 1.11 0.55
Parity 0.75 0.89 0.79 0.91 0.54
____________________________________________________________
Table 2. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the past obstetrical history variables between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
______________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Past obstetrical
history variables Mean SD Mean SD t-value
______________________________________________________________________
Previous live births 0.72 0.94 0.66 0.83 0.23
Previous abortions 0.85 1.21 0.84 1.10 0.13
Previous miscarriages 0.18 0.33 0.17 0.54 0.07
Past medical history
variables
_______________________________________________________________________
Infections 0.62 0.72 1.25 1.12 2.83**
Injuries 0.32 0.67 0.79 0.77 2.91**
Surgeries 0.65 0.75 1.04 0.73 1.59
Hospitalizations 0.63 0.75 1.35 0.87 2.51*
Illnesses 0.46 0.43 0.83 1.02 1.50
Habit history variables
_______________________________________________________________________
Past Drug Use 0.77 1.16 1.52 1.24 2.30*
Physical Activity 1.34 1.22 0.70 0.80 -2.06*
_____________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.96); **significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.57)
Table 3. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the emotional state factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups
________________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Emotional state factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
________________________________________________________________________
Anxiety-stress -0.21 1.94 -1.76 1.34 3.40*
Fear 1.16 2.07 -0.83 1.71 4.13*
Maternal Identity 0.95 1.80 0.21 1.76 2.67*
Beliefs about Birth 1.48 1.43 0.23 1.55 3.34*
Beck Depression Inventory 11 9 13 6 1.31
Life Stress Inventory 328 160 444 311 1.05
Taylor Anxiety z-score 0.25 0.23 0.51 0.10 3.93*
_____________________________________________________________
Table 4. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the emotional state factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups when grouped for hypnotherapy
______________________________________________________________________
Hypnotherapy No Hypnotherapy
Emotional state factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
______________________________________________________________________
Anxiety-stress
Normal -1.60 0.69 0.81 2.02 4.09**
Abnormal -1.91 0.59 -1.51 2.05 0.77
t = 1.27 t = 3.18**
Fear
Normal 0.48 2.21 1.68 1.83 1.89
Abnormal -1.06 1.14 -0.74 2.06 0.59
t = 2.10* t = 3.40**
Maternal-Identity
Normal -0.19 1.43 1.91 1.56 3.52**
Abnormal -0.51 1.38 0.03 2.13 0.81
t = 0.48 t = 2.65*
Beliefs
Normal 1.66 1.23 0.87 1.41 1.51
Abnormal 0.19 1.15 0.33 1.40 0.36
t = 1.47 t = 2.89**
Depression (BDI)
Normal 18.1 5.08 9.5 7.4 3.60*
Abnormal 20.2 7.66 14.2 7.2 0.42
t = 0.42 t = 2.70*
Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (z-normalized score)
Normal 0.46 0.31 0.11 0.17 5.71**
Abnormal 0.65 0.13 0.59 0.17 0.56
t = 0.89 t = 3.57**
Life Stress Inventory
Normal 544 166 225 71 4.11**
Abnormal 515 219 510 131 0.51
t = 0.15 t = 2.81**
_____________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+2.048); **significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.763)
Table 5. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the psychosocial support factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Psychosocial support
factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Partner 1.29 1.40 -0.54 1.96 3.83**
Mother's mother 0.29 1.53 -0.42 1.41 1.89*
Friends 0.92 1.17 -0.12 1.01 3.34**
Marital satisfaction (z-score) 0.61 0.15 0.30 0.13 4.01**
__________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.960); ** significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.576)
Table 6. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the psychosocial support factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups when grouped for hypnotherapy
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Psychosocial support
factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Partner
Hypnotherapy 0.50 1.69 -0.40 1.94 1.13
No hypnotherapy 1.74 1.33 -0.63 2.17 3.86*
t = 2.30* t = 0.44
Mother's mother
Hypnotherapy 0.75 1.82 -0.43 1.01 0.95
No hypnotherapy 0.65 1.42 -0.30 1.66 1.67
t = 0.53 t = 0.43
Friends
Hypnotherapy 0.94 1.22 -0.25 0.53 3.16*
No hypnotherapy 0.81 1.27 0.01 1.38 1.85 t = 0.13 t = 0.93
Marital Satisfaction (DAS) (z-score)
Hypnotherapy 0.40 0.23 0.46 0.11 0.91
No Hypnotherapy 0.75 0.22 0.21 0.10 5.22**
t = 2.54* t = 2.03
___________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.01 level.
Table 7. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the birth data between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Birth data Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Gestation (weeks) 40.08 1.09 40.07 3.94 .1
Labor length (hours)
First stage 6.53 4.99 11.10 8.11 2.64**
Second stage 1.23 3.00 1.60 2.18 0.94
Birthweight (g) 2701.51 395.35 2887.70 529.52 0.41
Apgar scores
1 min 8.56 1.23 7.80 2.06 2.50*
5 min 9.13 1.16 8.36 1.44 -2.12*
___________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level; ** significant at the 0.01 level.
*Significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.576)
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.96); ** significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.57)
16 April 1995
Louise Acheson, MD, MS
Associate Editor
Archives of Family Medicine
Bowman Gray School of Medicine
Medical Center Boulevard
Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1084
Dear Dr. Acheson:
I am submitting another manuscript related to hypnosis during pregnancy to the Archives for consideration for publication. The manuscript is entitled "Hypnosis to Facilitate Normal Birth under Adverse Conditions." I have tried to follow all the guidelines of the Archives. The paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and I am happy to assign copyright to the Archives if the paper is accepted.
I hope this paper will prove acceptable for publication. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Lewis E. Mehl, MD, PhD
Resident and
Research Assistant Professor
Telephone (802) 656-3270
Fax (802) 860-1547Appendix A. Interview format.
APPENDIX B
Ratings for Psychosocial Variables
1. Fear
Very Negative (-3)
A. Labor & birth is a very negative, frightening, ordeal
(no sense of being able to manage the fear with a
quality of life or death panic to the fear).
B. Pain is inevitable, life-threatening, and cannot be
managed.
C. Intense panic about losing control during birth
exists.
D. Uncontrollable panic about abandonment during
pregnancy and birth.
E. Panic about impending motherhood (sense of death of
self with no rewards).
F. Personal conviction of a sense of failure to the
extent of impending doom.
G. Personal conviction of impending doom for the baby.
Negative (-2)
A. Seemingly unresolvable sense of birth leading to
physical damage.
B. Unaddressable fears of pain during labor.
C. Fear of loss of control } difficult
D. Fear of abandonment } / to resolve;
E. Fear of motherhood } all with few
F. Fear of "failing" at birth } \ coping
G. Fear for baby's health } skills
Mildly negative (-1)
Apprehensions about:
A. Labor & birth } minimal
B. Pain } / skills for
C. Loss of control } with managing
D. Abandonment } \ these fears
E. Motherhood }
F. Failure }
G. Baby's health }
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
Fears on A. through G. with which the woman is actively attempting to cope, through established coping styles and/or learning new coping styles with research staff.
Positive (+2)
Healthy anticipation for the challenges of A. through G. When fear appears, there are active, working, mature coping styles through which fears are resolved.
Very Positive (+3)
Enthusiastic anticipation of the challenges of A. through G. with excellent coping skills and very realistic expectations.
2. Anxiety-stress
Very Negative (-3)
A. Severe conflict in significant relationships.
B. Excessive fatigue and lack of energy in the face
of stress.
C. Significant depression in the face of stress.
D. Intense externally directed responses under stress
(blame, aggression, projection).
E. Highly unstable living situation.
F. Significant somatization during stress (headache,
back pain.
G. High levels of unmanageable anxiety.
Negative (-2)
A. Moderate conflict
B. Moderate fatigue & lack of energy
C. Moderate depression
D. Moderate external responses
E. Moderately unstable living situation
F. Moderate somatization (nausea, tension)
G. Moderate levels of anxiety
Mildly negative (-1)
Mild levels of A. through G.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly positive (+1)
A. Significant relationships are somewhat harmonious.
B. Energy is somewhat available for coping with
anxiety-stress.
C. Low levels of happiness and contentment are described.
D. Anxiety and stress are handled through internally
directed processes, including relaxation and seeking support
and assistance.
E. Living situation has more stability than not.
F. Coping styles are generally successful at resolving
stress without somatic effects.
G. Anxiety and stress is overall tending toward
management and resolution.
Positive (+2)
A. Harmonious significant relationship.
B. Energy is available.
C. Happiness and contentment are described.
D. Stress and anxiety are managed through internal means
which work well for the woman.
E. Stable living situation.
F. Successful coping styles.
G. Anxiety and stress is managed and resolved.
3. Maternal Self-identity
Very Negative (-3)
A. The woman feels forced into motherhood against her will.
B. The woman is very oriented toward career & believes
that child will ruin her career (major identity).
C. The woman feels repulsed by thoughts of the fetus and is
alienated from the experience of being pregnant.
D. The woman cannot imagine herself as a mother and feels
very unsure and insecure about the prospect.
E. The woman is convinced she will be a very poor mother
and will damage her child.
F. The woman feels great shame at being pregnant and
about motherhood.
Negative (-2)
A. The woman is resentful at having been manipulated into
motherhood.
B. The woman's primary identity is her career. Motherhood
seems incompatible.
C. The woman expresses antagonism toward the fetus and
regrets being pregnant.
D. The woman feels insecure about becoming a mother.
E. The woman worries she will not be a good mother.
F. The woman feels shame at being pregnant and about
motherhood.
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. The woman vascillates on her decision to have a baby.
B. The woman tends away from identifying as a mother,
feels unready for motherhood.
C. The woman feels unprepared for the fetus.
D. The woman is somewhat insecure about becoming a
mother.
E. The woman is somewhat concerned that she will not
mother well.
F. The woman is embarrassed about pregnancy and
motherhood.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. More than less, woman feels accepting of her
pregnancy.
B. Woman is working toward accepting her identity as a
mother.
C. Woman is working toward acceptance of the baby.
D. Woman is working toward becoming comfortable with the
reality of motherhood.
E. Woman is beginning to accept that she will mother adequately.
F. Woman is working toward feeling good about pregnancy
and motherhood.
Positive (+2)
A. Accepting of her pregnancy
B. Acceptance of identity as a mother
C. Acceptance of the baby
D. Comfort with reality of motherhood
E. Acceptance that she will be/is a good mother
F. Feeling good about being pregnant and becoming a
mother
Very Positive (+3)
A. Enthusiastic acceptance
B. Enthusiastic identification with being a mother
C. Enthusiastic welcoming of the baby
D. Excitement about the reality of motherhood
E. Valuation of herself as a excellent mother
F. Feeling very proud about becoming a mother
4. Beliefs:
Very Negative (-3)
A. All pain is very bad, even life-threatening.
B. Birth is disgusting, repulsive, even life-
threatening.
C. People are evil, always untrustworthy, and should
be shunned and avoided.
D. Motherhood is a degrading, awful, humiliating
experience.
E. Work is the only means of achieving worth, and having
a baby destroys that.
F. Deep inside, I am worthless and unimportant,
and am lucky to be permitted even to exist.
G. There are no comforts or sources of help anywhere.
Negative (-2)
A. Pain is bad.
B. Birth is an unpleasant experience that you go through
to get a baby.
C. People are usually unhelpful and often untrustworthy
and not to be relied upon.
D. Motherhood is an unpleasant experience.
E. Work is the major source of personal worth; having a baby
will erode that.
F. I am an inferior person deep inside; nobody could really
truly love me.
G. If there are sources of strength and assistance,
they're not available for me.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Pain is frightening, but can be accepted and worked
with.
B. Birth is frightening, but I'm learning I can overcome
those fears.
C. People have let me down, but I'm starting to learn to trust.
D. Motherhood has seemed negative in the past, but I'm
learning that I can make it a positive experience.
E. Work has always been very important to me, but I'm
learning it's not everything.
F. I'm starting to learn how to really trust and love
myself.
G. I'm beginning to draw on inner sources of strength
that I never knew I had.
Positive (+2)
A. Pain can be healthy and can be worked with as part of
a satisfying experience.
B. Birth is a positive experience.
C. Other people provide a support in times of need.
D. Motherhood is a positive experience.
E. I will balance in a gratifying manner motherhood with
all my other life activities.
F. I trust and love myself much of the time.
G. I draw on inner sources of strength when in need.
Very Positive (+3)
A. Pain is a healthy challenge which I will handle and
will grow with.
B. Birth is an exciting and wonderful experience.
C. Other people are a real source of strength, comfort,
and support to me.
D. Motherhood is the most wonderful experience of a woman's
life.
E. I'm really excited to experience the integration of
mothering and work.
F. I trust and love myself and am a very worthwhile
person.
G. I'm constantly nourished by inner, spiritual resources.
5. Psychosocial Support from Baby's Father
Very Negative (-3)
A. Overtly hostile relationship
B. Extreme conflict present
C. Father is actively rejecting
D. No intimacy; no contact
E. No communication
F. No marriage or relationship
G. No skills at conflict resolution
Negative (-2)
A. Covert hostility with occasional eruptions into overt
hostility
B. Moderate conflict present
C. Father is removed and distant
D. Low levels of intimacy; live separate lives with
little contact
E. Very poor communication
F. Very unhappy with marriage
G. Minimal skills at conflict resolution (conflict is
generally not resolved)
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. Mild hostility present
B. Mild conflict present
C. Father is generally unemotional, but present
D. Occasional intimacy, but generally separate
E. Poor communication
F. Unhappy with marriage
G. Conflict is resolved, but with threat to the
relationship
Neutral (0)
No codable responses
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Attempting to work on reducing hostility present
B. Working to resolve conflict in the relationship
C. Father working to become more emotionally
available in the relationship
D. Couple is actively working to improve intimacy
E. Couple is working to improve communication
F. Couple is working to improve problems that contribute to
their marital satisfaction
G. Couple is learning to resolve conflict without
threatening the relationship
Positive (+2)
A. Partner is generally accepting of the other and the
pregnancy
B. Couple is in harmony with each other
C. Father is interested and involved in the pregnancy
and birth plans
D. Trust, intimacy, and closeness are dependable parts of
the relationship most of the time
E. Good communication exists most of the time
F. Overall sense of marital satisfaction despite the
existence of some problem areas
G. Ease of conflict resolution without threat to the
relationship
Very Positive (+3)
A. Partner is very accepting of the woman and the pregnancy
B. High levels of harmony exist; for example, baby may
have been planned together
C. Father is thrilled about the pregnancy and baby
D. Very high levels of trust and intimacy are present
E. Excellent communication of emotions, including anger
and love
F. Very high levels of marital satisfaction
G. Strength of the relationship allows resolution of conflict
before problems arise
6. Psychosocial Support from Mother's Mother
Very Negative (-3)
A. Very negative statements about childbirth, such as
"birth will rip your insides out" or "women die in
childbirth," or that mother's mother almost died in
childbirth
B. Parenting is a very negative experience
C. Mother's mother refuses to have anything to do with
her once she is pregnant
D. No contact; no intimacy or sharing
E. No communication
F. Very strong childlike dependency
G. Very actively rejecting
Negative (-2)
A. Mostly negative statements about childbirth
B. Parenting is a negative experience
C. Mother's mother avoids contact
D. Contact is superficial
E. Poor communication
F. Mother is overprotective and fosters dependency
G. Mother's mother is anxious and rejecting
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. Mildly negative statements about childbirth, such
as women lose health and beauty from pregnancy
B. Parenting is mildly negative experience
C. Woman is stressed and anxious in presence of her mother
D. Sharing exists at the level of concern about mother's
mother's reactions and disapproval
E. Communication is indirect
F. Relationship fosters feelings that mother's mother is
strong and mother is weak
G. Mother's mother is mildly disapproving
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Mother is mildly positive about birth
B. Mildly positive about parenting
C. Can turn to mother for support when in crisis
D. Sometimes can share intimately with mother
E. Sometimes easy and good communication exists
with opportunity for clarifying feelings
F. Generally adult relationship, with return to mother-child
relationship when in crisis
G. Mother is conditionally accepting with periods
of genuine warmth
Positive (+2)
A. Positive statements about childbirth
B. Positive statements about parenting
C. Mother is available for support
D. Mother and daughter maintain a good relationship with
intimacy and sharing
E. Good, direct communication
F. Consistent, adult-adult relationship with
opportunities for both to give and receive
G. Mother is warm and accepting
Very Positive (+3)
A. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
childbirth
B. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
parenting
C. Mother is very available for support
D. Very good opportunities for intimacy and sharing
E. Excellent, direct communication
F. Very strong personal friendship
G. Very close ties with warmth and acceptance
Positive (+2)
A. Positive statements about childbirth
B. Positive statements about parenting
C. Good friendships available for support
D. Good friendships with intimacy and sharing
E. Good direct communication
F. Adult give and take relationship
G. Strong social support system (friends organize baby
shower, etc.)
Very Positive (+3)
A. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about childbirth,
describing it as a joyous experience
B. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
parenting
C. Excellent friendships, very available for support
D. Very good opportunities for intimacy and sharing
E. Excellent, direct communication
F. Adult give and take relationships with opportunities for both
to be weak and strong
G. Excellent social support system (friends involved in
birth preparations and plans)
[1] Harmon TM, Hynan MT, Tyre TE. Improved obstetric outcomes using hypnotic analgesia and skill mastery combined with childbirth education. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1990; 58(5): 525-530.
[2] Mairs DAE. Hypnosis and pain in childbirth. Contemporary Hypnosis 1995; 12(2):111-118.
[3] McCarthy P. Hypnosis in obstetrics. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 1998; 26(1):35-42.
[4] Harmon TM, Hynan MT, Tyre TE. Improved obstetric outcomes using hypnotic analgesia and skill mastery combined with childbirth education. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1990; 58(5): 525-530.
[5] Sauer C, Oster MI. Obstetric hypnosis: Two case studies. Australian Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 1997; 25(1):74-79.
[6] Dillenburger K, Keenan M. Obstetric hypnosis: an experience. Contemporary Hypnosis 1996; 13(3): 202-204.
[7] Barber J. A brief introduction to hypnotic analgesia. In Barber J (Ed). Hypnosis and suggestion in the treatment of pain: A cliical guide. New York: Norton, 1996, pp. 3-32.
[8] Oster MI. Psychological preparation for labor and delivery using hypnosis. American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 1994; 37(1): 12-21.
[9] D’Eon JL. Hypnosis in the control of labor pain. In Spanos N, Chaves J. (Eds). Hypnosis: The cognitive-behavioral perspective. Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1989, pp. 273-296.
[10] South TL. Hypnosis in childbirth: A case study in anesthesia. In Lankton SR, Zeig JK. Treatment of special populations with Ericksonian approaches: Ericksonian monographs, No. 3. New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1988, 00. 16-24.
[11] Rossi EL, Cheek DB. Mind-body therapy: Ideomotor healing in hypnosis. New York: Norton, 1988
[12] Harmon TM, Hynan MT, Tyre TE. Improved obstetric outcomes using hypnotic analgesia and skill mastery combined with childbirth education. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1990; 58(5): 525-530.
[13] Tiba J, Frater J, Balogh I, Bognarne-Varfalvi M. Combining psychotherapeutic methods in preparing mothers for delivery. Magyar Pszichologiai Szemle 1985; 42(3) 223-230.
[14] Wormnes B. The use of hypnosis in childbirth. Tidsskrift for Norsk Psykologforening 1984; 21(6); 285-293.
[15] Mehl L., Donovan S., Peterson G.: The role of hypnotherapy in facilitating normal birth. In Fedor-Freybeigh P, Vogel MLV (eds.) Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine. Park Ridge, NJ: The Parthenon Publishing Group, 1990.
[16] Venn J. Hypnosis and Lamaze method -- an exploratory study: A brief communication. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. 1987; 35(2): 79-82.
[17] Mehl L. Prenatal hypnosis for conversion of breech presentation to vertex. Archives of Family Medicine 1994.
[18] Mehl LE. Psychobiosocial intervention in threatened premature labor. Pre- & Peri-Natal Psychology Journal 1988; 3(1): 41-52.
[19] Glaser B. Grounded Theory. San Anselmo, CA: The Sociology Press, 1977.
Lewis
Hypnosis to Facilitate Normal Birth
Lewis E. Mehl-Madrona, M.D., Ph.D.
Center for Complementary Medicine
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
and
Department of Family Practice
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Running Head: Psychosocial Variables and Birth
Key words: Fear, Birth, Birth complications, Cesarean, Anxiety, Stress, Social Support
This research was supported in part by Resources for World Health, Inc., San Francisco, California; the contributions of an anonymous individual private donor from Tucson, and by the United States Air Force. The opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not reflect opinion or official policy of the United States Air Force or the Department of Defense.
Address communication and reprint requests to Dr. Mehl at the Center for Complementary Medicine, Shadyside Hospital, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, 5230 Centre Ave., SON Bldg., Rm 216, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. Voice: 412-623-1365, fax: 412-623-1029. E-mail: madronalm@ssh.edu and/or mmadrona@aol.com.
ABSTRACT
Background: Prior research by the author showed that psychosocial factors distinguished abnormal from normal birth outcome. The purpose of this study was to determine if prenatal hypnosis could facilitate normal birth.
Methods:
Results: The use of hypnotherapy significantly inhibited negative emotional factors from being related to abnormal birth outcome.
Conclusions: Attention to reducing the impact of adverse psychosocial risk factors through the prenatal use of hypnosis did improve outcome.
INTRODUCTION
In these days of health care reform, an important opportunity exists to explore the utility of psychosocial interventions in improving birth outcome. These interventions are often less expensive than medical procedures and can be provided by non-physicians. One of these interventions is hypnosis.
Labor length and analgesic use have been reported to be decreased when hypnosis is done during pregnancy. [1] Anxiety about and during birth is decreased. [2] The incidence of postpartum depression is lessened.[3], [4] Increased self-confidence, increased calmness during labor, and easier transition into breast feeding has been described.[5] Decreased pain sensation has been reported.[6], [7], [8], [9], [10] Reductions have occurred in the number of complicated births.[11] Babies born have had higher Apgar scores.[12] Hypnosis subjects experienced greater belonging and security during labor, were less afraid of birth, and perceived birth more as a positive event.[13] Hypnosis helped women to be more relaxed during labor and birth, reduced hyperventilation, and increased feelings of participation and mastery.[14] A psychosocial intervention program that included hypnosis reduced the number of cesarean deliveries and oxytocin augmentations or inductions.[15]
Only one published report showed no improvement over Lamaze technique from the addition of hypnosis, though both LaMaze and hypnosis alone lessened pain equally during labor.[16]
Hypnosis has been reported helpful in the conversion of the breech presentation to vertex[17] and in the treatment of premature labor.[18]
The purpose of this research was to address the question of whether high stress and low social support contributed to birth complications and to determine if hypnosis would protect the high stress-low social support woman from developing birth complications.METHODS
Settings and sources of subjects: The author practiced holistic medicine in San Francisco, California, and, later, Tucson, Arizona. As part of this practice, he provided prenatal hypnosis. Two hundred sixty subjects in the first or second trimester of pregnancy were referred for prenatal hypnosis and included in this study. These patients paid for their visits, or their insurance was billed. Data obtained from the was initially obtained for clinical purposes. Referrals came from family phyicians, obstetricians, naturopathic physicians, and midwives practicing in these areas. Patients seen for their first appointment during the third trimester of pregnancy were not included in this study because the author feared that insufficient time would exist to conduct a thorough evaluation and to provide sufficient treatment to alter birth outcome. (Challenging this belief should be the topic of another study.)
During that same time, the author recruited subjects from these same groups of physicians and midwives for a study of psychosocial factors in the prediction of obstetrical risk. These subjects were told that information was needed from them to study how best to predict risk in childbirth. Subjects were paid for completion of questionnaires and for being interviewed. Informed consent was obtained and the study was approved by the author’s Institutional Review Board. Matched, comparison subjects were obtained from this cohort of subjects, who were not referred for hypnosis. Bias was expected to be against the hypnosis subjects, since 1) they came from the same groups of health care providers, and 2), their providers had not identified them as having special needs which could be addressed by hypnosis. There were approximately 2000 subjects from which to match for the comparison group.
Assessment: A complete medical and psychosocial history was obtained from all subjects, including: (1) Demographic information, (2) Complete family medical history, (3) Ob/gyn health history, (4) Psychosocial history, (5) Past medical history, and (6) Review of current symptoms.
The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory was administered, along with the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale, the Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. The couple was interviewed whenever possible. The woman was assessed for her relationship to her body, awareness of body symptoms and patterns of body tension. The scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale were normalized to a 0 to 1 scale, as the scores on the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. That scale was oriented so that higher scores meant greater marital satisfaction. The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory was assessed over the preceding 3 years.
Couples were interviewed whenever possible and during that interview, information was solicited from which an assessment of the couple's beliefs, experiences, expectations and affective states was made. Assessment was also made of the women's stressors, fears and social support. Interview formats and questions are present as Appendix A.
Matching: Subjects in the comparison group were matched with subjects in the hypnosis group so that their values lay within the same intervals defined below:
a) Age: 15-19, 20-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40+
b) Socioeconomic status: No insurance, Medicaid, Commercial insurance or HMO, highest level private commercial insurance (ratings of insurance as average or high level was made by the author’s hospital’s billing department independent of this study).
c) Obstetrical risk (defined by the POPRAS system from Harbor General -- UCLA): Low, medium, high.
d) Marital status: Unmarried, married, separated, divorced (at the time of initial interview).
e) Education: Less than 12 years, high school graduate, junior college or college courses, college graduate, graduate courses, graduate degree.
f) Parity: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4+.
Evaluation: Initial interviews aimed to establish close rapport with each subject, so that feelings, fears and complaints could be freely expressed. Interviews usually lasted two hours. Information about the woman's past and current reactions toward herself, her family, partner, work, social, religious and physical experience was elicited. Her knowledge of the physiology of pregnancy and birth, her menstrual experience, family patterns of pregnancy and birth, changes in sexual relationships, attitudes toward body changes, the baby, nursing, and general experiences of pregnancy and birth were assessed.
Note was made of shifts in attitudes and reactions indicated by changes in tempo and intensity of verbalizations, slips of the tongue, innuendo, facial expression, vasomotor activity and tone of voice. Physiological monitoring was included when possible and changes in blood pressure, heart rate, skin conductance, skin temperature and muscle tension were noted when associated with specific subject matter.
The interest or capacity of each woman for participation varied. Some had but little experience thinking about themselves or that which had happened to them and expressed themselves poorly. Some subjects who verbalized poorly gave crucial, pertinent material once encouraged to talk about themselves. Others were defensive and produced scanty material.
These interviews represented different experiences to different patients. To most, they gave a much needed feeling of being an individual in whom others were interested. To a few, the interviews were simply an opportunity to be a part of a study, and to a couple of women, the interviews provided a serious threat. Most of the patients, however, soon came to regard the interview as a helpful experience--an opportunity to talk about anxieties and problems.
Observations of the prenatal care provider were elicited by telephone interview or a data form sent in the mail. Obstetric data and all physical examination findings during the course of pregnancy and childbirth were abstracted from prenatal care records, requested after delivery (the woman signed a records release form during the initial interview). Every effort was made to learn as much as possible about the patients in terms of their psychological functioning, cultural background and life experiences.
Interview records were examined in accordance with Glaser’s method of grounded theory.[19] In this method, qualitative data is examined with an eye toward data reduction. All possible categories which make sense clinically and theoretically are applied to the data. Categories are tabulated and reviewed. Categories are collapsed and combined when possible and logical to obtain a limited and manageable number of variables. A continued coding, sorting, and evaluating process eventually results in a data reduction scheme which makes sense and represents what is available in the data.
For example, the statement, "I am afraid of pain in childbirth", was coded as a fear response. Initially it was called “personal fear of birth, then fear of birth, and finally, fear, as categories were combined. By taking the verbal statements, reviewing any descriptions of associated affective expression, a statement could be made about the intensity of the fear. Statements made were rated on a +3 to -3 scale. "I am afraid of pain in childbirth" became a 'Fear' statement, with a numeral rating assigned to represent its intensity. Appendix B lists the final coding format that developed through the grounded theory process.
The final seven categories to arise from the coding process included:
(1) Fear,
(2) Anxiety-stress,
(3) Maternal self-identity
(4) Beliefs,
(5) Psychosocial support from the partner,
(6) Psychosocial support from the mother's mother,
(7) Psychosocial support from friends.
A team of three clinicians assigned responses to the appropriate category and rated the response for intensity . The frequency of occurrence of a specific response and the magnitude or intensity of the responses were sufficient for clinicians to grade responses from -3 to +3 according to the strength of the statement. Comparative adverbs of 'very', 'mildly', etc., were included as indicators of the magnitude of the psychological state. The verbal responses of the women were differentially weighted in the specific content categories in proportion to the assumed intensity represented by statements made and interviewer notes. Values were assigned to all the verbal responses made. One type of direct verbal report of the subjective affective experience, such as, "I am anxious", would be classified in the 'anxiety-stress' category, and have a weighted value of a -2, while the same statement with a greater intensity, " I am very anxious", could be weighted -3. Each of the women's responses were assessed with the value weighted on each variable to develop a profile of her psychological attitude during pregnancy. The sign of the rating (+ or -) was in accordance with the hypothesized relationships of how this factor would affect the birthing process. The descriptors provided were those which worked for the raters to achieve over 85% agreement. They were developed through rating patients together prior to beginning the study. If the raters could not agree through consensus, the average of their ratings was taken and rounded. The inter-rater reliability was checked on every fifth patient and remained above 0.85.
Treatment: If hypnosis were successful it would be expected to prevent patients with many adverse factors from having abnormal birth complications. If hypnosis was not successful it would be expected to have no impact on outcome.
The general approach used for prenatal hypnosis was oriented toward problem-solving and was perceived as brief, not as insight-oriented nor psychoanalytically-based psychotherapy. Goals included increased relaxation, decreased anxiety, increased sense of trust of social support, realistic fear and a feeling of confidence that the woman could cope adequately with the pain of labor. Visualization was used to guide the woman through an imaginary experience of giving birth, thereby decreasing fear and anxiety. Careful notes were made of the interviews. Audio and videotapes of representative hypnosis sessions are available upon request.
The mean number of prenatal interviews was 5. The mode for number of psychosocial sessions was three. The minimum number was one and the maximum, 60. All hypnosis was provided by the author. Subjects in the comparison group were seen for two-three hours total, usually twice.
Outcome variables: A normal birth was defined as one without obstetrical intervention (no Cesarean, no uterine dysfunction, no fetal distress, no low Apgar scores, no infant resuscitation required, etc). Uterine dysfunction was diagnosed when treated by the doctor or midwife with oxytocin augmentation during labor or with induction. Fetal distress was noted when it was recorded on the labor and delivery record. Apgar scores were recorded on the labor and delivery record. Infant resuscitation efforts were described on the labor and delivery record. All of these were obtained from the hospital records, or, for home birth, from the midwife’s birth records.
An abnormal birth, therefore, required the use of obstetrical technology, including Cesareans, induction and augmentation of labor with oxytocin, fetal distress resulting in intervention or fetal scalp sampling, low Apgar scores, and postpartum hemorrhage. An obstetrician and two certified nurse-midwives reviewed each case to assess normal versus abnormal. They were blind to the existence of this study. They agreed on 95% of cases. For the remaining cases, their consensus was accepted. These were borderline cases in which, for example, blood loss was on the borderline of excessive or fetal distress was on the borderline of being excessive.
Data analysis: The T-test procedure and the discriminant analysis procedures from the Systat statistical package for the MacIntosh computer was used. Statistics provided are already corrected using the Bonferoni method for the number of comparisons made. Chi-square tests were used to test statistical signficance of differences between groups. Variables were compared within the total sample of 520 women by actual outcome group. Then comparisons were reconsidered with subjects grouped by the use of hypnosis or not.
RESULTS
Table 1 compares demographics between women having normal births and abnormal births in this sample. No significant differences were expected between women in the hypnosis and the comparison group, since matching procedures were used. Table 1 shows no signficant differences, either, in demographic variables, when women were compared between for actual outcomes. Age of the total sample of patients varied from 18 years to 39 years with an average of 27 years. Years of education ranged from 9 to 19, with an average of 13 years. Fifty-two percent of the women were primigravidous, 24% were secundigravidous, 11% were having their third child, and 13% were pregnant with their fourth or greater child. No significant differences in level of medical risk were found between subjects who had abnormal outcomes versus normal outcomes. No differences were found in the range of distance from place of birth for women in normal and abnormal outcomes.
Contribution of Medical and demographic variables to risk: Table 2 shows no differences in the two groups for members having previous live births, previous abortions and previous miscarriages. Women in the abnormal birth group showed significantly more previous (to the pregnancy) infections, injuries and hospitalizations. These events were not obstetrical or gynecological and did not increase their risk on the Popras Obstetrical Risk Screening Criteria. There were no differences in number of prior surgeries or diagnosed illnesses. Women in the abnormal birth group showed more frequent past drug use. Neither group was using drugs during the pregnancy. Women in the normal birth group were more physically active.
Emotional state variables. Table 3 shows the differences in the emotional state variables. All four variables were significantly different between groups. Women in the abnormal birth group showed more anxiety-stress and fear. Their beliefs were more negative toward birth. They showed less maternal identity.
Table 4 compares the emotional state variables between the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups, grouped for the use or non-use of hypnosis. The comparison group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between anxiety and stress when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of high anxiety-stress who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Fear variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between fear when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences were still present but to a lesser degree when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy appeared to prevent women with high fear who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes, but not to the same extent as for anxiety-stress. A significant difference was still present between women having abnormal births and women having normal births, both of whom received hypnotherapy.
Maternal self-identity variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed significant differences between maternal identity when normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were compared. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of low maternal identity who received hypnosis from from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Belief variable. The control group who did not receive hypnotherapy showed that negative beliefs about birth were significantly associated with abnormal birth outcome. These differences disappeared when comparisons were made in the presence of hypnosis. The presence of hypnotherapy seemed to inhibit cases of women with negative beliefs about birth who received hypnosis from having abnormal birth outcomes.
Depression (BDI). Among the comparison group, increased Beck Depression scores were significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not signficant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of depression on birth outcome. The greater levels of depression in the normals in the hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale. Among the control group, increased Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale scores was significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not significant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of manifest anxiety on birth outcome. The greater levels of manifest anxiety in the normals in the hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Life Stress Inventory. Among the control group, increased Life Stress Inventory scores were significantly associated with abnormal outcomes. Within the hypnosis group, this difference was not signficant, indicating that hypnosis protected against the effects of high levels of life stress on birth outcome. The greater levels of life stress in the normals in the hypnosis group when compared to normals in the non-hypnosis group further suggests that hypnosis had a protective effect.
Social Support Variables. Table 5 shows differences between normal birth outcome women and abnormal birth outcome women on measures of social support. Higher levels of perceived support from the woman's partner (husband, boyfriend, etc.) was signficantly associated with normal birth outcome. Higher levels of perceived support from the woman's own mother was, intriguingly, significantly associated with abnormal birth outcome. Higher levels of support from the woman's friends was statistically significantly associated with normal birth outcome. Higher levels of marital satisfaction as measured by the Dyadic Adjustment Scale was statistically significantly associated with normal birth outcome.
Support from mother's mother. No statistically significant differences or effects were observed.
Support from friends variable. Lower levels of support from friends were associated with abnormal birth in the presence of hypnotherapy than in its absence.
Marital satistaction. For the control group who did not receive hypnotherapy, higher levels of marital satisfaction were associated with normal births, and low levels with abnormal birth. Statistically significantly lower levels of marital satisfaction were still associated with normal birth in the presence of hypnotherapy.
Birth data. In comparing the mean scores between the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups on birth data variables, first stage labor length, Apgar score at 1 minute, and Apgar score at 5 minutes, significant differences were found as would be expected. First stage labor length was shorter, and the Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes were better for the normal birth outcome group than for the abnormal birth outcome group (by definition). No significant differences between the mean scores for the normal and abnormal birth outcome groups were found for gestational age, second stage labor length and birthweight, indicating that premature labor did not figure a role in these differences. These results are summarized in Table 6.
Discriminant function analysis was used to correctly classify 91% of the cases correctly into the normal birth outcome group (group N) or the abnormal birth outcome group (group A). Women having normal deliveries were classified correctly with 90.2% accuracy, compared to 92.1% for women having normal births. The canonical correlation was 0.7808 meaning that about eight times out of ten, correct classification occurred. The most significant psychosocial factors were fear and support from the baby's father and drug use. Hypnosis was signficantly associated with normal outcome.
No one particular practice group was significantly associated with abnormal outcomes, suggesting that practitioner practice patterns were sufficiently similar not to contribute to outcome differences. Practitioners who were willing to refer patients for hypnosis or for a study on psychosocial factors affecting risk tended to be more supportive of natural childbirth and had lower intervention rates than their colleagues who would not participate in making such referrals.
DISCUSSION
Examination of the group of women who were evaluated and not offered hypnotherapy revealed that psychosocial variables were related to abnormal birth outcome. Seven major psychosocial variables showed importance to birth problems. These included maternal stress and anxiety, fear, negative beliefs about birth, negative maternal self-identity. Psychosocial support variables of significance included support from the baby's father, support from friends, and marital satisfaction/dissatisfaction as measured with the Dyadic Adjustment Scale. Depression as measured by the Beck Depression Inventory was asociated with abnormal birth as was manifest anxiety (Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale), and Life Stress over the past three years (Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory).
Providing hypnosis to women at psychosocial risk (as judged by the above criteria) did seem to help them have a normal birth.
Of surprise was the finding that high levels of support from the woman's mother was associated with abnormal birth outcome. This may indicate that the manner in which we rated this variable keyed more into dependency and passivity, or that women need a different kind of support from their mothers than we imagined in conceptualizing our rating system.
This study shows that a psychosocial intervention program can have a positive effect on birth outcome among women who are having full-term labors. Prenatal providers might do well to incorporate a consideration of psychosocial risk factors during prenatal care and to utilize methods such as hypnosis (or others that may prove effective) to help reduce psychosocial risk during routine prenatal care. This can be done cost-effectively, through utilization of a trained mental health professional. This practitioner can interact with nurses and childbirth educators to improve co-ordination of patient care and provide attention to psychosocial risk. Specifically, psychosocial risk reduction involves:
(1) Identification, acceptance and resolution of fears.
(2) Identification of states of high anxiety-tension, with helping the client learn more effective coping styles.
(3) Identification of negative beliefs about birth and parenting, with provisions for reframing and emotional relearning.
(4) Identification of low maternal identity with anticipatory guidance for the mothering role and hypnotherapy to improve self-esteem.
(5) Consideration of strengths and stresses of the woman's support system. Needed interventions included:
(a) Couple's therapy to decrease stress, increase husband's emotional availability, improve lifestyles, etc.
(b) Individual counseling for the husband to address his unique concerns (when indicated).
(c) Network therapy (environmental intervention with the mother's friends (which can be done in childbirth classes),
(d) Therapy with the mother and her mother to facilitate transition and change of that relationship, and/or,
(e) Helping the woman with no psychosocial support to establish needed relationships and resources.
On a broader level, these findings may presage a time when all medicine is practiced more holistically, with mind-body interventions seen as important. When the way medicine is practiced changes to reflect our new understanding of the interactive nature of all aspects of the patient's life on health and disease, we will have come far.
Table 1. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the demographic variables between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
_____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Demographic variables Mean SD Mean SD t-value
_____________________________________________________________________
Age 27.42 4.64 28.83 5.09 0.45
Years of education 13.83 2.36 14.50 2.53 0.55
Religion 2.23 2.74 2.45 2.69 0.28
Place of birth 3.82 2.19 3.91 2.92 0.52
Marital status 2.17 1.24 2.30 1.11 0.55
Parity 0.75 0.89 0.79 0.91 0.54
____________________________________________________________
Table 2. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the past obstetrical history variables between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
______________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Past obstetrical
history variables Mean SD Mean SD t-value
______________________________________________________________________
Previous live births 0.72 0.94 0.66 0.83 0.23
Previous abortions 0.85 1.21 0.84 1.10 0.13
Previous miscarriages 0.18 0.33 0.17 0.54 0.07
Past medical history
variables
_______________________________________________________________________
Infections 0.62 0.72 1.25 1.12 2.83**
Injuries 0.32 0.67 0.79 0.77 2.91**
Surgeries 0.65 0.75 1.04 0.73 1.59
Hospitalizations 0.63 0.75 1.35 0.87 2.51*
Illnesses 0.46 0.43 0.83 1.02 1.50
Habit history variables
_______________________________________________________________________
Past Drug Use 0.77 1.16 1.52 1.24 2.30*
Physical Activity 1.34 1.22 0.70 0.80 -2.06*
_____________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.96); **significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.57)
Table 3. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the emotional state factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups
________________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Emotional state factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
________________________________________________________________________
Anxiety-stress -0.21 1.94 -1.76 1.34 3.40*
Fear 1.16 2.07 -0.83 1.71 4.13*
Maternal Identity 0.95 1.80 0.21 1.76 2.67*
Beliefs about Birth 1.48 1.43 0.23 1.55 3.34*
Beck Depression Inventory 11 9 13 6 1.31
Life Stress Inventory 328 160 444 311 1.05
Taylor Anxiety z-score 0.25 0.23 0.51 0.10 3.93*
_____________________________________________________________
Table 4. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the emotional state factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups when grouped for hypnotherapy
______________________________________________________________________
Hypnotherapy No Hypnotherapy
Emotional state factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
______________________________________________________________________
Anxiety-stress
Normal -1.60 0.69 0.81 2.02 4.09**
Abnormal -1.91 0.59 -1.51 2.05 0.77
t = 1.27 t = 3.18**
Fear
Normal 0.48 2.21 1.68 1.83 1.89
Abnormal -1.06 1.14 -0.74 2.06 0.59
t = 2.10* t = 3.40**
Maternal-Identity
Normal -0.19 1.43 1.91 1.56 3.52**
Abnormal -0.51 1.38 0.03 2.13 0.81
t = 0.48 t = 2.65*
Beliefs
Normal 1.66 1.23 0.87 1.41 1.51
Abnormal 0.19 1.15 0.33 1.40 0.36
t = 1.47 t = 2.89**
Depression (BDI)
Normal 18.1 5.08 9.5 7.4 3.60*
Abnormal 20.2 7.66 14.2 7.2 0.42
t = 0.42 t = 2.70*
Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (z-normalized score)
Normal 0.46 0.31 0.11 0.17 5.71**
Abnormal 0.65 0.13 0.59 0.17 0.56
t = 0.89 t = 3.57**
Life Stress Inventory
Normal 544 166 225 71 4.11**
Abnormal 515 219 510 131 0.51
t = 0.15 t = 2.81**
_____________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+2.048); **significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.763)
Table 5. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the psychosocial support factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Psychosocial support
factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Partner 1.29 1.40 -0.54 1.96 3.83**
Mother's mother 0.29 1.53 -0.42 1.41 1.89*
Friends 0.92 1.17 -0.12 1.01 3.34**
Marital satisfaction (z-score) 0.61 0.15 0.30 0.13 4.01**
__________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.960); ** significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.576)
Table 6. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the psychosocial support factors between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups when grouped for hypnotherapy
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Psychosocial support
factors Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Partner
Hypnotherapy 0.50 1.69 -0.40 1.94 1.13
No hypnotherapy 1.74 1.33 -0.63 2.17 3.86*
t = 2.30* t = 0.44
Mother's mother
Hypnotherapy 0.75 1.82 -0.43 1.01 0.95
No hypnotherapy 0.65 1.42 -0.30 1.66 1.67
t = 0.53 t = 0.43
Friends
Hypnotherapy 0.94 1.22 -0.25 0.53 3.16*
No hypnotherapy 0.81 1.27 0.01 1.38 1.85 t = 0.13 t = 0.93
Marital Satisfaction (DAS) (z-score)
Hypnotherapy 0.40 0.23 0.46 0.11 0.91
No Hypnotherapy 0.75 0.22 0.21 0.10 5.22**
t = 2.54* t = 2.03
___________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.01 level.
Table 7. Comparison of means and standard deviations for the birth data between normal and abnormal birth outcome groups.
____________________________________________________________________
Normal Abnormal
Birth data Mean SD Mean SD t-value
____________________________________________________________________
Gestation (weeks) 40.08 1.09 40.07 3.94 .1
Labor length (hours)
First stage 6.53 4.99 11.10 8.11 2.64**
Second stage 1.23 3.00 1.60 2.18 0.94
Birthweight (g) 2701.51 395.35 2887.70 529.52 0.41
Apgar scores
1 min 8.56 1.23 7.80 2.06 2.50*
5 min 9.13 1.16 8.36 1.44 -2.12*
___________________________________________________________
*Significant at the 0.05 level; ** significant at the 0.01 level.
*Significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.576)
*Significant at the 0.05 level (p>+1.96); ** significant at the 0.01 level (p>+2.57)
16 April 1995
Louise Acheson, MD, MS
Associate Editor
Archives of Family Medicine
Bowman Gray School of Medicine
Medical Center Boulevard
Winston-Salem, NC 27157-1084
Dear Dr. Acheson:
I am submitting another manuscript related to hypnosis during pregnancy to the Archives for consideration for publication. The manuscript is entitled "Hypnosis to Facilitate Normal Birth under Adverse Conditions." I have tried to follow all the guidelines of the Archives. The paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and I am happy to assign copyright to the Archives if the paper is accepted.
I hope this paper will prove acceptable for publication. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely yours,
Lewis E. Mehl, MD, PhD
Resident and
Research Assistant Professor
Telephone (802) 656-3270
Fax (802) 860-1547Appendix A. Interview format.
APPENDIX B
Ratings for Psychosocial Variables
1. Fear
Very Negative (-3)
A. Labor & birth is a very negative, frightening, ordeal
(no sense of being able to manage the fear with a
quality of life or death panic to the fear).
B. Pain is inevitable, life-threatening, and cannot be
managed.
C. Intense panic about losing control during birth
exists.
D. Uncontrollable panic about abandonment during
pregnancy and birth.
E. Panic about impending motherhood (sense of death of
self with no rewards).
F. Personal conviction of a sense of failure to the
extent of impending doom.
G. Personal conviction of impending doom for the baby.
Negative (-2)
A. Seemingly unresolvable sense of birth leading to
physical damage.
B. Unaddressable fears of pain during labor.
C. Fear of loss of control } difficult
D. Fear of abandonment } / to resolve;
E. Fear of motherhood } all with few
F. Fear of "failing" at birth } \ coping
G. Fear for baby's health } skills
Mildly negative (-1)
Apprehensions about:
A. Labor & birth } minimal
B. Pain } / skills for
C. Loss of control } with managing
D. Abandonment } \ these fears
E. Motherhood }
F. Failure }
G. Baby's health }
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
Fears on A. through G. with which the woman is actively attempting to cope, through established coping styles and/or learning new coping styles with research staff.
Positive (+2)
Healthy anticipation for the challenges of A. through G. When fear appears, there are active, working, mature coping styles through which fears are resolved.
Very Positive (+3)
Enthusiastic anticipation of the challenges of A. through G. with excellent coping skills and very realistic expectations.
2. Anxiety-stress
Very Negative (-3)
A. Severe conflict in significant relationships.
B. Excessive fatigue and lack of energy in the face
of stress.
C. Significant depression in the face of stress.
D. Intense externally directed responses under stress
(blame, aggression, projection).
E. Highly unstable living situation.
F. Significant somatization during stress (headache,
back pain.
G. High levels of unmanageable anxiety.
Negative (-2)
A. Moderate conflict
B. Moderate fatigue & lack of energy
C. Moderate depression
D. Moderate external responses
E. Moderately unstable living situation
F. Moderate somatization (nausea, tension)
G. Moderate levels of anxiety
Mildly negative (-1)
Mild levels of A. through G.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly positive (+1)
A. Significant relationships are somewhat harmonious.
B. Energy is somewhat available for coping with
anxiety-stress.
C. Low levels of happiness and contentment are described.
D. Anxiety and stress are handled through internally
directed processes, including relaxation and seeking support
and assistance.
E. Living situation has more stability than not.
F. Coping styles are generally successful at resolving
stress without somatic effects.
G. Anxiety and stress is overall tending toward
management and resolution.
Positive (+2)
A. Harmonious significant relationship.
B. Energy is available.
C. Happiness and contentment are described.
D. Stress and anxiety are managed through internal means
which work well for the woman.
E. Stable living situation.
F. Successful coping styles.
G. Anxiety and stress is managed and resolved.
3. Maternal Self-identity
Very Negative (-3)
A. The woman feels forced into motherhood against her will.
B. The woman is very oriented toward career & believes
that child will ruin her career (major identity).
C. The woman feels repulsed by thoughts of the fetus and is
alienated from the experience of being pregnant.
D. The woman cannot imagine herself as a mother and feels
very unsure and insecure about the prospect.
E. The woman is convinced she will be a very poor mother
and will damage her child.
F. The woman feels great shame at being pregnant and
about motherhood.
Negative (-2)
A. The woman is resentful at having been manipulated into
motherhood.
B. The woman's primary identity is her career. Motherhood
seems incompatible.
C. The woman expresses antagonism toward the fetus and
regrets being pregnant.
D. The woman feels insecure about becoming a mother.
E. The woman worries she will not be a good mother.
F. The woman feels shame at being pregnant and about
motherhood.
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. The woman vascillates on her decision to have a baby.
B. The woman tends away from identifying as a mother,
feels unready for motherhood.
C. The woman feels unprepared for the fetus.
D. The woman is somewhat insecure about becoming a
mother.
E. The woman is somewhat concerned that she will not
mother well.
F. The woman is embarrassed about pregnancy and
motherhood.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. More than less, woman feels accepting of her
pregnancy.
B. Woman is working toward accepting her identity as a
mother.
C. Woman is working toward acceptance of the baby.
D. Woman is working toward becoming comfortable with the
reality of motherhood.
E. Woman is beginning to accept that she will mother adequately.
F. Woman is working toward feeling good about pregnancy
and motherhood.
Positive (+2)
A. Accepting of her pregnancy
B. Acceptance of identity as a mother
C. Acceptance of the baby
D. Comfort with reality of motherhood
E. Acceptance that she will be/is a good mother
F. Feeling good about being pregnant and becoming a
mother
Very Positive (+3)
A. Enthusiastic acceptance
B. Enthusiastic identification with being a mother
C. Enthusiastic welcoming of the baby
D. Excitement about the reality of motherhood
E. Valuation of herself as a excellent mother
F. Feeling very proud about becoming a mother
4. Beliefs:
Very Negative (-3)
A. All pain is very bad, even life-threatening.
B. Birth is disgusting, repulsive, even life-
threatening.
C. People are evil, always untrustworthy, and should
be shunned and avoided.
D. Motherhood is a degrading, awful, humiliating
experience.
E. Work is the only means of achieving worth, and having
a baby destroys that.
F. Deep inside, I am worthless and unimportant,
and am lucky to be permitted even to exist.
G. There are no comforts or sources of help anywhere.
Negative (-2)
A. Pain is bad.
B. Birth is an unpleasant experience that you go through
to get a baby.
C. People are usually unhelpful and often untrustworthy
and not to be relied upon.
D. Motherhood is an unpleasant experience.
E. Work is the major source of personal worth; having a baby
will erode that.
F. I am an inferior person deep inside; nobody could really
truly love me.
G. If there are sources of strength and assistance,
they're not available for me.
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Pain is frightening, but can be accepted and worked
with.
B. Birth is frightening, but I'm learning I can overcome
those fears.
C. People have let me down, but I'm starting to learn to trust.
D. Motherhood has seemed negative in the past, but I'm
learning that I can make it a positive experience.
E. Work has always been very important to me, but I'm
learning it's not everything.
F. I'm starting to learn how to really trust and love
myself.
G. I'm beginning to draw on inner sources of strength
that I never knew I had.
Positive (+2)
A. Pain can be healthy and can be worked with as part of
a satisfying experience.
B. Birth is a positive experience.
C. Other people provide a support in times of need.
D. Motherhood is a positive experience.
E. I will balance in a gratifying manner motherhood with
all my other life activities.
F. I trust and love myself much of the time.
G. I draw on inner sources of strength when in need.
Very Positive (+3)
A. Pain is a healthy challenge which I will handle and
will grow with.
B. Birth is an exciting and wonderful experience.
C. Other people are a real source of strength, comfort,
and support to me.
D. Motherhood is the most wonderful experience of a woman's
life.
E. I'm really excited to experience the integration of
mothering and work.
F. I trust and love myself and am a very worthwhile
person.
G. I'm constantly nourished by inner, spiritual resources.
5. Psychosocial Support from Baby's Father
Very Negative (-3)
A. Overtly hostile relationship
B. Extreme conflict present
C. Father is actively rejecting
D. No intimacy; no contact
E. No communication
F. No marriage or relationship
G. No skills at conflict resolution
Negative (-2)
A. Covert hostility with occasional eruptions into overt
hostility
B. Moderate conflict present
C. Father is removed and distant
D. Low levels of intimacy; live separate lives with
little contact
E. Very poor communication
F. Very unhappy with marriage
G. Minimal skills at conflict resolution (conflict is
generally not resolved)
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. Mild hostility present
B. Mild conflict present
C. Father is generally unemotional, but present
D. Occasional intimacy, but generally separate
E. Poor communication
F. Unhappy with marriage
G. Conflict is resolved, but with threat to the
relationship
Neutral (0)
No codable responses
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Attempting to work on reducing hostility present
B. Working to resolve conflict in the relationship
C. Father working to become more emotionally
available in the relationship
D. Couple is actively working to improve intimacy
E. Couple is working to improve communication
F. Couple is working to improve problems that contribute to
their marital satisfaction
G. Couple is learning to resolve conflict without
threatening the relationship
Positive (+2)
A. Partner is generally accepting of the other and the
pregnancy
B. Couple is in harmony with each other
C. Father is interested and involved in the pregnancy
and birth plans
D. Trust, intimacy, and closeness are dependable parts of
the relationship most of the time
E. Good communication exists most of the time
F. Overall sense of marital satisfaction despite the
existence of some problem areas
G. Ease of conflict resolution without threat to the
relationship
Very Positive (+3)
A. Partner is very accepting of the woman and the pregnancy
B. High levels of harmony exist; for example, baby may
have been planned together
C. Father is thrilled about the pregnancy and baby
D. Very high levels of trust and intimacy are present
E. Excellent communication of emotions, including anger
and love
F. Very high levels of marital satisfaction
G. Strength of the relationship allows resolution of conflict
before problems arise
6. Psychosocial Support from Mother's Mother
Very Negative (-3)
A. Very negative statements about childbirth, such as
"birth will rip your insides out" or "women die in
childbirth," or that mother's mother almost died in
childbirth
B. Parenting is a very negative experience
C. Mother's mother refuses to have anything to do with
her once she is pregnant
D. No contact; no intimacy or sharing
E. No communication
F. Very strong childlike dependency
G. Very actively rejecting
Negative (-2)
A. Mostly negative statements about childbirth
B. Parenting is a negative experience
C. Mother's mother avoids contact
D. Contact is superficial
E. Poor communication
F. Mother is overprotective and fosters dependency
G. Mother's mother is anxious and rejecting
Mildly Negative (-1)
A. Mildly negative statements about childbirth, such
as women lose health and beauty from pregnancy
B. Parenting is mildly negative experience
C. Woman is stressed and anxious in presence of her mother
D. Sharing exists at the level of concern about mother's
mother's reactions and disapproval
E. Communication is indirect
F. Relationship fosters feelings that mother's mother is
strong and mother is weak
G. Mother's mother is mildly disapproving
Neutral (0)
No codable response
Mildly Positive (+1)
A. Mother is mildly positive about birth
B. Mildly positive about parenting
C. Can turn to mother for support when in crisis
D. Sometimes can share intimately with mother
E. Sometimes easy and good communication exists
with opportunity for clarifying feelings
F. Generally adult relationship, with return to mother-child
relationship when in crisis
G. Mother is conditionally accepting with periods
of genuine warmth
Positive (+2)
A. Positive statements about childbirth
B. Positive statements about parenting
C. Mother is available for support
D. Mother and daughter maintain a good relationship with
intimacy and sharing
E. Good, direct communication
F. Consistent, adult-adult relationship with
opportunities for both to give and receive
G. Mother is warm and accepting
Very Positive (+3)
A. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
childbirth
B. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
parenting
C. Mother is very available for support
D. Very good opportunities for intimacy and sharing
E. Excellent, direct communication
F. Very strong personal friendship
G. Very close ties with warmth and acceptance
Positive (+2)
A. Positive statements about childbirth
B. Positive statements about parenting
C. Good friendships available for support
D. Good friendships with intimacy and sharing
E. Good direct communication
F. Adult give and take relationship
G. Strong social support system (friends organize baby
shower, etc.)
Very Positive (+3)
A. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about childbirth,
describing it as a joyous experience
B. Very positive statements and enthusiasm about
parenting
C. Excellent friendships, very available for support
D. Very good opportunities for intimacy and sharing
E. Excellent, direct communication
F. Adult give and take relationships with opportunities for both
to be weak and strong
G. Excellent social support system (friends involved in
birth preparations and plans)
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Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Diabetes study one page summary
Here's the diabetes study I am trying to get going.
Lewis
Diabetes is a serious health problem and especially so for aboriginal people. Most efforts to improve diabetes among aboriginal people have failed. Spirituality is an important and understudied aspect of health and disease, both in terms of coping with illness, management of stress, and the possibility of direct spiritual healing. Previous research among Pima Native Americans in Arizona showed that a control group condition consisting of education in Pima culture and spirituality was actually helpful in improving diabetes control compared to the treatment condition (best American Diabetes Association diabetes disease management education and accompanying clinical services), which resulted in worse diabetes control.
We propose to investigate the effect of enhancing spirituality among primarily Aboriginal people (Native Americans in U.S. terminology) on the primary outcome of glucose control for type 2 diabetics. Secondarily, we will (1) assess the effect of enhancing spirituality on quality of life among primarily aboriginal diabetes, (2) characterize spirituality of modern day aboriginal people, both using psychometric instruments (all of which will be further validated for use with aboriginal people) and qualitative methods, including descriptions of the process of increasing spiritual fluency and practice, and characterization of any instances of spiritual transformation.
Specifically, our proposal consists of three aims: 1) A community level analysis of the effects upon diabetes control of increasing local spiritual literacy; 2) a person-based qualitative study within these communities of how increasing spiritual literacy translates into what is typically called spirituality, healing, and spiritual transformation within a primarily Aboriginal context; and 3) an individual level analysis of how increasing spirituality and spiritual literacy defined both qualitatively and quantitatively is associated with glucose control among diabetics. To accomplish this, we will match pairs of communities for culture/language group and for distance from major urban centers (the best predictor of diabetes prevalence for communities in Quebec). We will work through our Department of Family Medicine’s Northern Medical Services unit to implement community focus groups to consider implementation of the two programs to be studied – spiritual enhancement versus diabetes knowledge translation. Equal resources will be available to each community to hire community members as participatory researchers (community health liaisons), to pay spiritual leaders or diabetes health educators, to pay their assistants (singer/helpers or other educators), and to provide support for community members to participate in regular meetings (childcare, food, transportation, supplies). A participatory framework will be followed with community members enrolled as collaborative participants in collecting stories about people’s experiences, completing questionnaires, and gathering medical data. The community health liaisons will be community members who will coordinate (in collaboration with our Project Coordinator and post-doctoral fellows) story collection, questionnaire completion, and will take people to the health clinic when necessary for medical measurements. They will obtain medical data (with permission of participants) from the medical clinics. A strength of our project is the existence of a Nationalized Health Service which will pay for all necessary laboratory studies since we are followed Canadian Diabetes Association Best Practices guidelines for diabetes management in our scheduling of testing. The presence of only one health clinic in each of the communities also strengthens our capacity to obtain longitudinal data.
Programs will be randomized to communities (maintaining matched pairs). The primary outcome variable is glycohemoglobin level. Secondary outcome variables include microalbumin levels in urine, blood pressure, body mass index, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, and triglycerides. Secondary psychosocial outcome variables include quality of life measures, anxiety, depression, and indices of spirituality and religiosity. Qualitative methods will include narrative analysis and modified grounded theory with dimensional analysis.
Quantitative data analysis will be accomplished with hierarchical linear modeling techniques using the medical outcome measures as dependent variables and treatment groups as independent variables with adjustments for potential confounding variables. Qualitative data analysis will be accomplished by local panels of experts ranking stories in order of increasing spiritual literacy in that local version of spirituality. These rank orderings will then be subjected to nonparametric statistical analysis with glycohemoglobin change as the dependent variable. More classical narrative analysis techniques will also be used.
Lewis
Diabetes is a serious health problem and especially so for aboriginal people. Most efforts to improve diabetes among aboriginal people have failed. Spirituality is an important and understudied aspect of health and disease, both in terms of coping with illness, management of stress, and the possibility of direct spiritual healing. Previous research among Pima Native Americans in Arizona showed that a control group condition consisting of education in Pima culture and spirituality was actually helpful in improving diabetes control compared to the treatment condition (best American Diabetes Association diabetes disease management education and accompanying clinical services), which resulted in worse diabetes control.
We propose to investigate the effect of enhancing spirituality among primarily Aboriginal people (Native Americans in U.S. terminology) on the primary outcome of glucose control for type 2 diabetics. Secondarily, we will (1) assess the effect of enhancing spirituality on quality of life among primarily aboriginal diabetes, (2) characterize spirituality of modern day aboriginal people, both using psychometric instruments (all of which will be further validated for use with aboriginal people) and qualitative methods, including descriptions of the process of increasing spiritual fluency and practice, and characterization of any instances of spiritual transformation.
Specifically, our proposal consists of three aims: 1) A community level analysis of the effects upon diabetes control of increasing local spiritual literacy; 2) a person-based qualitative study within these communities of how increasing spiritual literacy translates into what is typically called spirituality, healing, and spiritual transformation within a primarily Aboriginal context; and 3) an individual level analysis of how increasing spirituality and spiritual literacy defined both qualitatively and quantitatively is associated with glucose control among diabetics. To accomplish this, we will match pairs of communities for culture/language group and for distance from major urban centers (the best predictor of diabetes prevalence for communities in Quebec). We will work through our Department of Family Medicine’s Northern Medical Services unit to implement community focus groups to consider implementation of the two programs to be studied – spiritual enhancement versus diabetes knowledge translation. Equal resources will be available to each community to hire community members as participatory researchers (community health liaisons), to pay spiritual leaders or diabetes health educators, to pay their assistants (singer/helpers or other educators), and to provide support for community members to participate in regular meetings (childcare, food, transportation, supplies). A participatory framework will be followed with community members enrolled as collaborative participants in collecting stories about people’s experiences, completing questionnaires, and gathering medical data. The community health liaisons will be community members who will coordinate (in collaboration with our Project Coordinator and post-doctoral fellows) story collection, questionnaire completion, and will take people to the health clinic when necessary for medical measurements. They will obtain medical data (with permission of participants) from the medical clinics. A strength of our project is the existence of a Nationalized Health Service which will pay for all necessary laboratory studies since we are followed Canadian Diabetes Association Best Practices guidelines for diabetes management in our scheduling of testing. The presence of only one health clinic in each of the communities also strengthens our capacity to obtain longitudinal data.
Programs will be randomized to communities (maintaining matched pairs). The primary outcome variable is glycohemoglobin level. Secondary outcome variables include microalbumin levels in urine, blood pressure, body mass index, LDL and HDL cholesterol levels, and triglycerides. Secondary psychosocial outcome variables include quality of life measures, anxiety, depression, and indices of spirituality and religiosity. Qualitative methods will include narrative analysis and modified grounded theory with dimensional analysis.
Quantitative data analysis will be accomplished with hierarchical linear modeling techniques using the medical outcome measures as dependent variables and treatment groups as independent variables with adjustments for potential confounding variables. Qualitative data analysis will be accomplished by local panels of experts ranking stories in order of increasing spiritual literacy in that local version of spirituality. These rank orderings will then be subjected to nonparametric statistical analysis with glycohemoglobin change as the dependent variable. More classical narrative analysis techniques will also be used.
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