SouthernWorldwide.com – A recent randomized controlled trial has revealed that adult patients experienced significant relief from pain and anxiety after just five minutes of in-person prayer.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Department of Family and Community Medicine, compared the impact of direct prayer against listening to music. The findings indicated that prayer offered greater and more sustained relief for both pain and anxiety symptoms.
Prayer is identified as the most commonly used form of complementary medicine in the United States, with 43% of Americans relying on it, according to statistics cited in the study.
Researchers focused on a practice known as proximal intercessory prayer (PIP). This is defined as in-person, face-to-face prayer specifically directed towards an individual’s well-being.
The research team recruited 180 adult patients from a family medicine waiting room. All participants had previously reported experiencing moderate to severe pain, anxiety, or a combination of both.
Following their standard medical appointments, patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group, the prayer group, received five minutes of in-person Christian prayer from a trained volunteer. The second group, the music group, spent five minutes listening to music.
The researchers then monitored changes in the participants’ self-reported pain and anxiety levels at several intervals. These measurements were taken immediately after the five-minute session, at two weeks, and again at six weeks.
The study, published in The Annals of Family Medicine, showed that while both groups experienced improvements, those in the prayer group reported substantially greater relief.
One individual not involved in the study described prayer as having transformative power, offering “healing and comfort.” This person shared a personal experience of a long and painful recovery, where daily prayer was deemed essential to their healing journey.
Regarding pain reduction, individuals who received in-person prayer experienced more significant drops in pain intensity immediately after the session. This superior level of relief persisted at the two-week follow-up when compared to the music group, according to the researchers.
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The benefits of prayer for anxiety reduction proved to be even longer-lasting. Prayer recipients reported notably greater reductions in anxiety immediately after the session. These positive effects remained statistically significant at both the two-week and six-week follow-up points.
Researchers noted that they did not find that patients who expected prayer to work benefited more. Jacobson stated that religious affiliation, religious intensity, and expectancy of healing did not predict who improved.
He further explained that the benefits were observed across a wide range of patients. This included those who were not of the Christian faith and those who did not anticipate the intervention to help them.
The researchers did acknowledge some limitations in the study. Primarily, they could not definitively prove that prayer itself was the direct cause of the improvements.
The team also pointed out that patients receiving prayer had human contact, whereas the music control group did not. The eye contact and gentle laying on of hands by the prayer volunteers might have contributed to the effects, as such physical contact is known to reduce pain.
The authors expressed a desire to conduct future studies with a control group that receives interpersonal contact but without the prayer component.
Jacobson suggested that for physicians and health systems, the study supports the ongoing practice of asking patients about spiritual care preferences as part of comprehensive, whole-person care. He also proposed considering the integration of trained Christian volunteer prayer practitioners into outpatient settings for interested patients.
The researchers propose that PIP could serve as a cost-effective, non-pharmacological, and beneficial complement to standard medical care.
Instead of replacing traditional treatments, the authors suggest that this brief, faith-based intervention could be incorporated into primary care settings to aid in managing pain and anxiety.
