description
Polytrauma is a consequence of traffic accidents, poisonings, falls, fires, drowning, violence, war, self-inflicted injuries or other causes. Polytraumatised patients suffer damage in two or more organ systems, from which one or more injuries pose a risk to life. There are many psychological consequences in the process of adapting to the consequences of the injuries: acute stress disorder, post- traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, amnesia, emotional problems, psychosomatic disorders, addiction and others. After the polytrauma, it is important to check the level of psychological trauma reflected in the patient's emotional needs (autonomy, integration, competence and orientation). Medical hypnosis has been a part of clinical practice from the time when pain was reduced during operations before the development of chemical anaesthesia. A report of the British and American Psychological Association based on numerous studies states that "over the past 30 years, so much research has been done (500 studies, of which 125 are methodologically sufficient for meta-study) on the basis of which we can conclude that the inclusion of hypnotic procedures can be an effective method in the treatment of a wide range of problems that arise in medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy" (33). Medical hypnosis is an effective therapeutic approach in rehabilitation that helps patients to coordinate cognitive, somatic, sensory, physiological, visceral and kinaesthetic changes related to the changes after the trauma. Because rehabilitation clients are so diverse regarding physical, affective, cognitive and sensory abilities, utilising hypnosis can pose special challenges. The patient's abilities and disabilities must be assessed and integrated into the strategies to use medical hypnosis for trance induction, and the kind of intervention that might be best utilised must be determining. It is important to assess the client's personality structure and his/her suitableness for the use of medical hypnosis (indications, contraindications), whereby the rehabilitation goals must be taken into account. Medical hypnosis can be effectively included within a structured psychotherapeutic treatment of trauma. With the help of medical hypnosis, the patient gets the opportunity to review the traumatic event, incorporate the important personal into the events and thus change the explicit and implicit memory of the trauma. In this way, the patient can regain a filling of control over his/her own body and feelings, thereby feeling safe and effective again. Because the traumatised persons are highly susceptible to hypnosis (depersonalisation, suggestibility), it is very useful to learn self-hypnosis during the last phase of the treatment to gain effective control over the symptoms. It is advisable to integrate the effective and scientifically validated approach of medical hypnosis into the rehabilitation process more often. That would improve the patient's motivation, focus, thoughts and emotional responses, hence improving the patient's adaptation and making the completion of the rehabilitation process more effective.