Analysis On Heart Rate Variability During Hypnosis In The Treatment Of Major Depressive Disorder

As a mental illness,major depressive disorder(MDD)has high incidence and it leads to obvious discomfort for patients as well as communication and physical dysfunction.Hypnosis treatment is a kind of psychological treatment and it is an important adjuvant treatment for MDD.However,the current evaluation of hypnosis treatment on MDD mainly depend on patient’s subjective description or scale.These evaluation methods are cumbersome and subjective,which would be influenced by patient’s self-cognition.There is a lack of objective evaluation of physiological effects of hypnosis treatment on MDD.Balance of autonomic nervous system(ANS)in MDD patients is broken,sympathetic activity increases and parasympathetic activity decreases.Heart rate variability(HRV)reflects the control of ANS.HRV analysis is able to describe the change of autonomic function on MDD patients.In this paper,we used HRV to analyze the change of MDD patient’s ANS under hypnosis,difference of ANS between MDD patients and healthy people,and physiological effects of MDD patients during hypnosis treatment.The research and results are as follows:1.The change of autonomic function under hypnosis is investigated.Using wavelet timefrequency method to analyze HRV,we investigate the changes of HRV and frequency components of HRV on healthy people in the four states during hypnosis.Results shown that the ratio of low frequency to high frequency components was more concentrative and steady in imagining state,which indicated that modulation of ANS increased during hypnotic state.2.The difference of ANS between MDD patients and healthy people is investigated.We compared the difference of time domain,frequency domain and nonlinear parameters between MDD patients and healthy people.Results shown that sympathetic activity of MDD patients increased and parasympathetic activity decreased.Parasympathetic activity did not increase normally as in healthy people when MDD patients underwent parasympathetic stimulation.When sympathetic nervous system activated,sympathetic modulation of MDD patients increased more obvious than healthy people.3.The physiological effects of MDD patients during hypnosis treatment is investigated.Experiment compared the changes of HRV parameters before,during and after hypnosis.Results shown that HRV increased during and after hypnosis,which inferred that with the psychological treatment during and after hypnosis,parasympathetic activity of MDD patients increased and balance of ANS improved.From this study,we can know that sympathetic nervous system on MDD patients was dysfunctional,balance of ANS was broken and parameters of HRV decreased.Hypnosis treatment can cause physiological changes in MDD patients,which is characterized by parasympathetic activity increased,balance of ANS improved and parameters of HRV increased.Therefore,HRV was able to reflect the physiological effects of hypnosis treatment on MDD objectively.