Hypnotherapy Will Be Included In National Study
Frank Lucas, CCH, and Ginny Lucas, DCH, of Evergreen Professional Hypnotherapy in Stockton, have been invited to participate in a national project conducted by the University of Illinois.
“Helping Young Smokers Quit” is co-funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention Office on Smoking and Health, and the National Cancer Institute. The study is both action- and research-oriented.
Phase one is aimed toward identifying and characterizing major programs and resources, as well as constraints of the “real world” setting in which they are offered.
Phase two will use standard measures and methodological approaches to evaluate various practices now being used by youth cessation programs across the US, including clinical hypnosis.
“In our practice we don’t preach to teens about the evils of tobacco,” Dr. Lucas explains. “Hopefully they get enough of that from other authority figures. Our focus is on actual cessation. When a teenager wants to quit, hypnosis intrigues them and, given the choice, they often prefer it to yet another class-and-lecture experience.”
“We help them discover the inner resources that make quitting easy,” her husband adds. “In most cases, when they leave our office it’s a done deal. We think it’s important enough that we offer our services free to teens and even, in some cases, to adults who qualify for Proposition 10 funding through First Five of San Joaquin.”
The “Helping Young Smokers Quit” research initiative will strive to fill a gap in knowledge about the types and elements of existing youth cessation programs in order to help states, schools, and other community-based and youth-serving organization better implement “programs that work.”
If you are a teen who would like to stop smoking, or if you have quit and would like to provide your input for inclusion in material presented to the study by Evergreen Professional Hypnotherapy, please call (209) 472-0722.