NHS successfully hypnotises obese 13-year-old as celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna calls for rollout to millions of kids and adults to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis
An NHS hospital is looking at hypnotising severely obese children to stop them overeating.
Celebrity hypnotist Paul McKenna has called for the NHS to roll out hypnosis for millions of kids and adults to tackle Britain’s obesity crisis. A case study presented at the European Congress on Obesity showed an NHS Complications of Excess Weight (CEW) Service successfully used hypnosis to treat a 13-year-old boy with severe obesity.
Matthew Selman, a senior clinical psychologist at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the boy had tried everything but his weight was still rising. He said: “I’m very optimistic about the benefits. It’s clearly not going to be for everyone but when it connects with someone, you can see quite significant changes.”
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Mr Selman added that two other patients also offered hypnosis alongside standard care but did not take to it. He now plans to try it with more young people to better understand who can benefit.
Self-help guru and hypnotist Paul McKenna, 62, said medics were increasingly seeing the benefits of alternative approaches to stop overeating. He said: “There’s no doubt that hypnotherapy for weight loss is a really good idea. Some people describe feeling like a switch was flipped in their mind and suddenly they just didn’t want to eat as much, felt motivated to exercise or became really conscious of what they were eating.
“A number of doctors have been saying publicly for a while, we should use these techniques in the NHS — we could save the NHS a fortune. Medical professionals are now looking at this and taking it seriously.”
Clinical hypnosis involves a therapist guiding a patient to reach a state of “heightened suggestibility” then introducing suggestions. It is offered by some NHS practitioners for irritable bowel syndrome and chronic pain but not weight loss.
The 13-year-old boy had three 50-minute hypnosis sessions in which was supported to “learn to eat for his body rather than his feelings” and to stop going to the cupboard and getting crisps after coming home from school. The teenager then continued using self-hypnosis for a total of four months.
His BMI score became closer to the normal figure for his age group and his body fat percentage fell from 66% to 55%. His anxiety scores also improved.
Paul said: “What I’m impressed with about this approach in Newcastle is that it’s rounded, using hypnosis alongside other techniques. But I would expect hypnosis to be a significant factor in helping people to reduce their weight.”
Around 16 million adults are living with obesity in the UK and a further 23m are overweight.
Separate data presented at Europe’s major obesity conference this week showed 6,500 children have been treated in the NHS at CEWs for severe obesity since they were launched in England in 2021, including more than 400 who were prescribed weight loss jabs.
Paul pioneered a technique called the Hypnotic Gastric Band which has been used by millions around the world. It guides patients through imagining that their stomach has shrunk from the size of a football to the size of a tennis ball. He added: “It doesn’t work for everyone every time, but it seems to work for most people most of the time.”
