Protecting the Public, Promoting Good Practice, Unity
and Continuing Development within the Profession
General Hypnotherapy Standards Council
& General Hypnotherapy Register
Why apply for training course
Accreditation with the GHSC?
The General Hypnotherapy Standards Council (GHSC) and General Hypnotherapy Register (GHR) are the UK’s largest and most prominent organisations within the field of Hypnotherapy and together present an exemplary model for the simultaneous protection of the public and the provision of practitioner credibility and services. The GHSC is responsible for overseeing the criteria for the ongoing registration of individual practitioners within the GHR, all complaints brought by the public against such registered practitioners and for the assessment and accreditation of hypnotherapy training courses which lead to that registration. It comprises more than 120 separate affiliated Training Schools, all of which may be viewed via our search facility.
Why Register as a
Practitioner with the GHR?
The GHR is overseen by the GHSC and is responsible for its day to day administration together with the implementation of all GHSC decisions. It is a professional association and register of practising hypnotherapists, comprising in excess of 3,000 UK based individual practitioners who collectively have over 7,000 practice locations listed (with many now offering therapy online, both within the UK and internationally), together with registered therapists in some 30 countries around the world and all of whom may be viewed via our search facility. We are additionally a verifying organisation for eligible practitioners who wish to register within the Hypnotherapy section of the profession’s Voluntary Regulator, the Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council, set up with Department of Health funding.
Latest News Bulletins
June 2025
The General Hypnotherapy Register – 2000 to 2025
This year the GHR will have been established for 25 years. It was founded in July 2000 and since that date both the GHR and the GHSC (founded in 2001) have made major contributions to the ongoing acceptance...
April 2025
Announcement from the Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council
The CNHC, in which the GHR is a Verifying Organisation (VO), has requested that we advise all GHR practitioners who are registered with them of the following: The government backed Professional Standards Authority (PSA) requires the CNHC to...
January 2025
GHSC Accredited Advanced Level Training Courses
GHR hypnotherapists registered at Practitioner status (or above) who have been in practice for a minimum of two years since their initial qualification and who have undertaken a GHSC accredited Advanced Level course are eligible for a free upgrade...
Commitment to Professional Standards
What is Hypnotherapy?
What is Hypnosis?
Healing by trance state (or an altered state of awareness) is among the oldest phenomena known to man and is found, in one form or another, in virtually every culture throughout the world. It could also be legitimately described as the original psychological therapy and somewhat more contentiously, as the basis for many of the more recent styles of psychological intervention…Read More
What is Hypnotherapy?
Psychological therapy and counselling (sometimes referred to as the ‘talking cure’) is the treatment of emotional and psychological disorders, unwanted habits and undesirable feelings, using psychological techniques alone. The aim of all such therapy is to assist people (usually referred to as clients) in finding meaningful alternatives to their present unsatisfactory ways of thinking, feeling or behaving…Read More
Who can be hypnotised?
The answer to this question is undoubtedly ‘virtually everyone’. This claim must, however, be qualified by the observation that some are more readily hypnotisable than others and that it will also depend upon one’s willingness to be hypnotised at the time. This willingness will itself depend upon a number of factors, not least of which will be the strength of the person’s particular need and their trust and confidence in the therapist concerned…Read More
Who may benefit from Hypnotherapy?
Again, the answer to this question is ‘virtually everyone’. Given that hypnotherapy can be utilised to access a person’s inner potential and that probably no one is performing to their actual potential, then this answer is literally true. However, it is not just potential which Hypnotherapy is well placed to address but also one’s inner resources to effect beneficial change…Read More
Some Common Concerns
People are sometimes concerned that they will ‘lose control’ in hypnosis. However, general consensus indicates that regardless of how deeply people may go in hypnosis and however passive they may appear to be, they actually remain in full control of the situation. They are fully able to talk if they wish to (or not, as the case may be) and can stand up and leave the room at any time…Read More