Treating adolescent conversion disorders: are hypnotic techniques reusable?

When treating disabling conversion disorders in hospitalized adolescents, clinicians must act to restore function as rapidly as possible. After attempting to rule out physical causes for the symptoms and trying to find persuasive psychological reasons that the patient will accept and use to resolve the condition, the inpatient staff of a multidisciplinary therapeutic milieu must seek additional approaches to the care of these seriously ill individuals. This clinical forum reports the author's experience treating 2 young patients, a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy, with hypnosis. Therapists of every experience level find hypnotic techniques that work for them in a variety of patients, but are hypnotic techniques really reusable? The author reports what he learned once again.