Comparative Effectiveness and Precision Treatment in Clinical Hypnosis: What Works, for Whom, and Compared With What?

Clinical hypnosis has an established evidence base of average efficacy across psychological, medical, and somatic conditions. Beyond its clinical applications, hypnosis also offers a distinctive phenomenological and neurophysiological model of particular states of consciousness, making it a valuable lens for understanding attention, suggestibility, and voluntary control. This Research Topic explores forms of hypnosis, efficacy, patient suitability, potential outcomes, and comparisons with active alternatives such as relaxation, guided imagery, mindfulness, psychoeducation, supportive attention, established psychotherapies, medical treatment, and treatment as usual.This Research Topic welcomes randomized controlled trials, pragmatic studies, individual-participant-data analyses, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses examining when and for whom hypnosis provides clinically meaningful benefit.We are particularly interested in contributions addressing:- Predictors and moderators of outcome, including hypnotizability, suggestibility, expectancy, absorption, imagery ability, therapeutic alliance, symptom profile, comorbidity, trauma history, and interoceptive awareness- The phenomenology of hypnotic experience, including depth of trance and dissociation- Differences between responders and non-responders to hypnotic treatment- Treatment modality and scheduling: number, frequency, duration, and spacing of sessions- Durability of treatment effects over timeSelf-hypnosis practice and its role in sustained outcomes- Therapist competence, treatment fidelity, and delivery format (individual, group, online)- The incremental value of adding hypnosis to established interventions- Clinically meaningful outcomes: responder status, remission, functional improvement, quality of life, patient-reported outcomes, and minimal clinically important differences- Mechanisms of change and treatment mediators, including neurophysiological and psychophysiological correlates of hypnotic responding (e.g., EEG), attentional and imagery processes, emotion regulation, self-efficacy, pain processing, and placebo and nocebo related expectancy effects- Implementation, acceptability, adverse or unintended effects, cost-effectiveness, and scalability within routine healthcareThis collection aims to build a clinically useful evidence base to guide treatment selection, personalization, and integration of hypnosis into psychological and medical care, while advancing our understanding of hypnosis as a model of particular states of consciousness. Topic editors: Francesca Strappini, Rinaldo Livio Perri, Enrico Facco Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85174/comparative-effectiveness-and-precision-treatment-in-clinical-hypnosis-what-works-for-whom-and-compared-with-what