Health Department offers hypnotherapy, acupuncture
cash to help staff quit smoking
The federal Health Department is
paying for unproven therapies to help its employees quit smoking.
In response to a question on notice
from Labor senator Joe Ludwig, the department said it makes hypnotherapy and
acupuncture available to its staff to help them quit smoking as part of its
Smoke Free Workplace policy.
So far this financial year, two
staff members had been reimbursed for hypnotherapy at a total cost of $1000, a
department spokeswoman said. There had been no applications or
reimbursements for acupuncture.
The aim of using hypnotherapy to
help people quit smoking is to put suggestions in the person's unconscious mind
to weaken their desire to smoke, or strengthen their will to stop, or to
improve their ability to complete a treatment program. Advocates of acupuncture
claim applying needles or surgical staples to the skin of the ear or other
parts of the body lessens withdrawal symptoms and helps people resist cues to
smoke.
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The latest edition of Tobacco in
Australia, which was compiled by Cancer Council Victoria and funded by the
federal Health Department, lists both acupuncture and hynotherapy as
"unproven remedies".
"The effectiveness of
hypnosis has been poorly studied, with studies producing conflicting
results," states the manual, which was last updated in 2012.
"To date, there is no clear
evidence to support the use of acupuncture or related treatments in their own
right as a quitting aid."
Health experts criticised the
department's support for the therapies.
"Those two procedures are not
what you'd call evidence-based," said Simon Chapman, professor in public
health at the University of Sydney.
"It's really just throwing
money away, and those procedures are often quite expensive."
Professor Chapman said between
two-thirds and three-quarters of all ex-smokers were able to quit without any
professional help or medication.
Mike Daube, professor of health
policy at Curtin University, commended the Health Department for supporting its
staff to give up smoking, but he said the evidence for both techniques was
"very thin indeed".
"I don't think government
departments should be paying good money for hypnotherapy or acupuncture,"
he said.
The department
spokeswoman said that in the interests of staff health, since 2010 the
department had considered applications for "reasonable reimbursement of a
range of activities to help employees quit smoking". These include
nicotine replacement products, medications recommended by a doctor and smoking
cessation programs and literature.
She said the department regularly
reviewed the list of activities that were approved under the policy, and each
application was individually assessed on its merits.
Professor Daube said the department
should "stick with what we know to be most effective", such as
encouraging staff to quit cold, seek help from their GP or use other approaches
which were supported by evidence, such as nicotine replacement therapy.
"I suspect this is probably
well-intentioned HR people who may not have sought advice from the very good
experts on tobacco policy they have elsewhere in the department."
The revelation comes as the
department reviews whether to continue paying the private health insurance rebate
on policies that cover natural therapies not supported by evidence.
According to the Private Health
Insurance Administration Council, benefits paid by insurers for natural
therapies grew by 345 per cent over the decade to 2012-13, significantly above
the growth rate for any other category of general treatment.
Acupuncture and hypnotherapy are not
within the scope of the department's review.
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