The following is excerpted from an online article posted by StudyFinds
A new clinical trial published in the Annals of Family Medicine suggests that a few minutes of in-person prayer, offered by a trained volunteer after a routine appointment, was linked to meaningful reductions in both pain and anxiety in patients. For anxiety, those benefits lasted weeks.
Researchers recruited 180 patients from a family medicine clinic, all dealing with moderate-to-severe pain, anxiety, or both. After their appointments, half received five minutes of in-person Christian prayer from a trained volunteer. The other half listened to soft music. Patients who received prayer reported greater drops in both pain and anxiety, and for anxiety, those gains held up at two and six weeks.
For anxiety, results were more pronounced. Prayer recipients showed roughly two-point greater reductions compared to the music group, and those differences held at both the two-week and six-week marks.
Unexpectedly, these benefits appeared regardless of whether a participant was religious, expected prayer to work, or held strong beliefs about God’s role in healing. Christians and non-Christians alike responded similarly in most analyses. As the authors wrote, “our findings suggest that PIP may be effective for a wide range of patients, including non-Christians and those who do not expect the intervention to be effective.” PIP refers to proximal intercessory prayer, the clinical term for in-person prayer offered by one person for another.
Source: StudyFinds
https://studyfinds.com/five-minutes-of-in-person-prayer-linked-to-less-pain-anxiety/