According to Helen Ryle, stage hypnotists, waving clocks and coaxing people into “clucking like chickens,” have given clinical hypnosis a bad rep. “It’s going to take a long time to get rid of that stigma,” says the Tralee-based hypnotherapist and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) practitioner, keen to dispel some of the misconceptions about her everyday practice.
‘If I had to choose between never writing or never reading again, I think I’d probably choose never writing, because I just couldn’t live without books,” says Sarah Webb, award-winning Irish children’s writer and reviewer.
When reviewing medical records from admissions to the old asylum near her hometown of Enniscorthy, Dr Emma Farrell stumbled on the crude origins of today’s diagnostic system for mental illness.
While enriching foods with sugar and starch may have helped to reduce infant mortality in the early 20th century, the same cannot be said for today, according to John Conneely, a general and bariatric surgeon at the Mater Private Hospital, Dublin.