Children's Doc Unique In Offering Hypnotherapy to Take Focus Off Pain
from The Children's Hospital (TCH) News, April 2006
“Dr. Mark” sat at the 7-year-old girl’s bedside, holding her hand as she underwent a long list of procedures: bone biopsy. Spinal tap. Bone-marrow aspiration. But in her mind, she wasn’t in a hospital room – she was laughing aloud as she raced Dr. Mark down the mountain on her skis. When she opened her eyes after the procedures, she asked when they would begin. She had had no pain medication – simply a numbing cream where the needle was inserted. She didn’t need it – Dr. Mark, a trained specialist, had hypnotized her.
“The brain is exceptionally powerful,” said Mark Popenhagen, PsyD, or “Dr Mark” to his patients. “The brain can shut off pain.”
Dr. Popenhagen is the first and only clinical psychologist and pain specialist at The Children’s Hospital and one of just a handful of such specialists across the country to help children use such techniques to control pain. Many of these specialists offer techniques such as distraction and guided imagery, but very few are trained to use hypnotherapy. “There’s a myth that a therapist using hypnosis will make you cluck like a chicken,” Dr. Mark said. “But I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. It’s not mind control. It’s simply super-focused attention where the patient uses her mind to block the pain.”
Dr. Mark, who formerly worked at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital , spends much of his time talking with patients and their families to help them cope with the illness and treatments. And, for some, Dr. Mark is there to help patients and their families deal with the fact that the child might die. Dr. Mark also teaches children other techniques for controlling pain. Sometimes all it takes is a distraction – a video game, movie or musical instrument. Other children respond to guided imagery – where they think of their “happy place” to take the focus off the pain. Others respond to relaxation exercises such as deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.
But the most unique and effective technique Dr. Mark uses is hypnotherapy. Once the child is hypnotized, he often has them “turn down” the pain using an imaginary dial, or he has them imagine drinking hot chocolate and the warm liquid going directly to the location of the pain. The techniques are not meant to replace drugs, he said, but can often make drugs work better. “I give children choices,” he said. “The techniques I teach these children give them a sense of control.”
The Pain Team includes physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses and rehab specialists. All work with patients to manage their pain. But there are so many kids at Children’s with chronic and acute pain that the hospital needed someone full-time. Dr. Mark sees five to 15 inpatients and outpatients a day, and half to one-third are oncology patients.
“We’ve had wonderful support from psychiatrists and psychologists in the hospital, but this is a full-time job,” said Roxie Foster, PhD, RN, Dr. Mark’s supervisor and Co-Director of Children’s Pain Service. “One of the things we know from our long history is that pain is an experience of the whole being. It involves body, mind and spirit. You don’t just give someone some medicine to make it all better.”
Although Dr. Mark was hired for his impressive psychological credentials, the fact that he could hypnotize children was “frosting on the cake,” Foster said. “We were so lucky to find someone who not only has the expertise to approach health and healing from a traditional psychological perspective but who can also apply alternative ways to help kids get well,” she said.
There are so many patients to see, in fact, that Dr. Mark often works 12-hour days. “I am dedicated to the kids,” he said. “I work with them on their physical and emotional pain. I can’t fix anyone, but I can help them feel more comfortable and in control.”
Dr. Mark Popenhagen, PsyD, a clinical psychologist and pain specialist at Children's, meets with oncology patient Emily Funk. Emily's ‘happy place’ when she's trying to forget about her pain is swimming with the dolphins.
