STANFORD, Calif. — It was no way for an 11-year-old to live. For a month the boy had endured daily episodes of uncontrollable jerking and foaming at the mouth, and his physicians at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford were concerned that the boy had epilepsy. Before starting the boy on a lifetime of anti-seizure medications, though, they turned to an unconventional diagnostic tool: hypnosis. “Children are highly suggestible and they have great imaginations,” said Packard Children’s child psychiatrist Richard Shaw, MD. “We’ve found that if we suggest that they are going to have one of their events while they are in a hypnotic trance, they will usually have one.” Read This Article
