A Quasi-Experimental Study on the Effect of Hypnotherapy in Managing Examination Anxiety and Enhancing Academic Performance among Secondary School Students in West Bengal

Abstract

Examination anxiety is one of the common psychological issues in adolescents, and usually, it affects focus, memory, and academic performance or achievements. The current paper set out to investigate the usefulness of hypnotherapy as a systematic psychological treatment in the examination anxiety management and academic performance among West Bengal secondary school students in India. The quasi-experimental pre-test and post-test control group design was used where 200 students (100 experimental and 100 control) were chosen by purposive selection on the basis of Test Anxiety Questionnaire (Nist & Diehl, 1990). The experimental group was subjected to three months hypnotherapy session, consisting of nine sessions each with an average of 40 minutes sessions and the control group was not subjected to any intervention within the period of the study. The data was compared by means of paired and independent sample t-tests with the help of SPSS software. The findings indicated that there was a high decrease in the examination anxiety (p < .001) and a significant positive change in academic performance (p < .001) in the experimental group compared to the control group. The results indicate the promise of hypnotherapy as a useful, non-pharmacological, and school-based intervention in improving mental health and academic performance of students. Another important concept that is highlighted in the study is the conceptual alignment between hypnotherapeutic relaxation and the Yogic philosophy of mental steadiness (cita-vritti nirodha), which provides an integrative view of mind-body interventions in the context of education.