Some Research Findings on the Efficacy of Spiritual Healing.

Compiled by Janelle Durham, 2001.

All of this data is my notes, taken from research summaries found in Benor, Daniel J. Spiritual Healing: Scientific Validation of a Healing Revolution. Southfield, MI: Vision Publications, 2001. I thank him for giving me permission to include this on the website.

I have included a significant portion of the controlled studies he cites which use human subjects, omitting any that were based on distance healing rather than hands-on healing, omitting some for lack of data, and others based on my personal judgments about what is most relevant to my discussion here. No effort was made to bias this presentation by only choosing “positive” studies which support energy healing, so “negative” studies are included. Full citations on studies available in Benor, and on-line, following links from http://www.wholistichealingresearch.com/Research/RschTop.htm

Controlled Studies.

Primary Researcher	Date of Pub.	Disease / Goal of Tx	Number of Subjects	Treatment Given	Results	Concerns with study
Garrard	1996	AIDS. á CD4 counts, á ability to cope with stress	20 HIV+ men, divided into C & E, randomized	E: 20 minutes of therapeutic touch (5 assessment, 15 tx). C: 20 minutes “mock TT”. Single blind.	Nine weeks after treatment: significant differences in CD4 counts (p <.05), significant differences in resources for coping with stress. (p <.001).
Olson, et al	1997	Stress. Improved immune system.	22 students preparing for exams, randomized E&C	E: three Therapeutic Touch  treatments. C: no treatment. No blinds.	After treatment, on the day before exams, there were modestly significant differences (p <.05) for the three immune system values measured.	The presence of a caring person, the practitioner, may have influenced the outcome, as the control group did not have this.
Dixon	1998	Chronic symptoms: a variety of conditions present for at least 6 months. Improve symptom scores, improve immune cell counts.	57. Randomly assigned to E&C.	E: 10 weeks of healing, 40 minutes each week. Healer passed hands over their bodies while visualizing white light passing through her into them. No blinds.	After three months, significantly better on symptom scores (modest p<.05) At six months, no significant difference in immune cells. On several self-assessment tests, experimental group showed consistently higher scores.	Not randomized, no blinds.
Krieger	1976	Goal: increase hemoglobin levels.		In three experiments, used healer Oscar Estebany. In fourth, used 32 nurses trained in therapeutic touch.	Significant increases in her experimental groups (from p<01 o p<.001) as opposed to her control groups.	Lack of details about TT treatment, results, duration of effects, etc.
Wetzel	1989	Increase hemoglobin levels. Replication of Krieger.	E: 48 Reiki students. C: 10 healthy medical professionals	Not a formal treatment, but participation in Reiki training. Implication is that in learning to activate their healing gifts, they also activated self-healing.	Blood draw before training, and 24 hours later. Significant change in both hemoglobin and hematocrit values for experimental group at level of p<.01. No significant change for control group.	Lack of randomization, small control group, lack of blinds for experimenter who checked levels
Silva	1996	Recovery from abdominal hysterectomy. Goal: Earlier recovery.	60 patients, randomly assigned to relaxation touch, back rub,  or no treatment	20 minutes of relaxation touch (an energy based technique, with investigator in meditative state), 20 minute back rub, no tx. No blinds?	Relaxation touch produced earlier recovery (particularly in the pulmonary and gastrointestinal systems) than either of the other conditions, with highly significant effects after one (p<.00005), two (p<.0001) and three (p<.00005) treatments.	Raw data not presented, so difficult to assess study’s validity. The massage group has, on the whole, longer times in surgery, and this could account for difference
Beutler, et al		Hypertension	120, divided into three groups based on levels of systolic B.P. Each group then divided into three subgroups.	12 Dutch Healers participated. E: Laying-on of hands. E2: Distant healing from behind mirrors (double blind). C.	Results mixed, with no single treatment consistently better than the other. After 15 weeks of treatment, 83% of “first group” (control?? Laying on-hands??) felt improved well-being. Compared with 43% in the “second groups” and 41% in the “third group”	Benor’s report is confusing here: above the results, where he lists the three groups, “no treatment” is listed first, so is presumably “first group” and laying on hands is listed last, presumably the “third group.” But below  the results, he mentions the “greater well-being in the laying-on of hands group.”
Attevelt	1988	Asthma and bronchitis. Improvement in breath volume, flow rate, frequency of attacks, color of sputum.	90. Divided into three groups.	15 minutes of E: distant healing from behind one-way mirrors (double blind), E2: laying on hands. C. no tx	Lack of significant differences among groups. No evidence of healing effect.	Possible experimenter bias, as author appears skeptical about distant healing.
Xiu, et al	1988	Goal: examine effects of qi gong healing on: heart rate, respiration, b.p. and SMBF			Most significant effect (p<.05) on the SMBF (skin microcirculatory blood flow). Dilation of blood vessels in skin may confirm healers’ reports that healees feel relaxed and flush when receiving healing.
Li, et al	1993	Goal: measure EEG’s of qigong master and subjects to see if synchronization effects are due to psychological suggestion.	12 normal subjects, control group	E: qi gong healing. C: mock qi gong.	Qigong master and recipients of qi showed statistically significant elevation in the beta frequency section of the EEG. Mock qi group showed no obvious change.
Kashiwasake	1993	Goal: measure effects of qi gong on blood flow, meridian activity, blood tests and psychological tests.			Results showed synchronization between the transmitters and receivers in their EEGs, a remarkable increase in electromagnetic emission from the receiver, and an increase in white blood cells in transmitter	Too few details in translated report to assess validity of findings.
Redner, et al	1991	Arthritis (for 6+ months), headaches (for 6+ weeks), lower back pain (6+ wks). Decrease pain and anxiety	47. Randomly assigned to E and placebo.	E: Johnston healing. (hands near body, visualize giving more energy or removing excess energy as  seems intuitively appropriate) C: same hand placements, but with mental exercises to block potential healing.	Several of the evaluation scales showed modestly significant (p <.05) differences in ratings of pain reduction.
Meehan	1993	Pain after major elective abdominal or pelvic surgery	108, randomly divided into 3 groups	E: TT:. 5 minutes of therapeutic touch. C1: MTT. 5 minutes mock TT (same hand motions, mental math). C2: SI. standard interventions only.	Substantial reduction in pain in the SI group, slight reduction in TT group, no reduction in MTT. None of the patients in the TT group reported increased pain in the hour after initial assessment, whereas 27 in the MTT group, and 3 in the SI group did. TT group showed a longer duration of pain relief than MTT (p<.05)	Negative results may have occurred due to negative suggestions from the research staff that the “nursing intervention” may not be effective.
Meehan, et al	1990	Post-operative pain after major elective abdominal or pelvic surgery. Goal: reduce pain.	159, randomized into three groups	E: therapeutic touch. Single blind control group: mock TT. Control: no study tx. One treatment the night before surgery. 7 times during post-op period.	Subjects who received TT in conjunction with the analgesic waited a significantly longer time before requesting further analgesic medication (p<.01). TT subjects received less analgesic medication over the whole post-op period than controls, but decrease was not significant.	Summary is brief, and lacks some details.
Slater	1996	Post-operative pain lasting more than 6 weeks after abdominal surgery.	23. Served as own controls (tx order was randomized)	All subjects had three sessions. One Healing Touch by trained provider, one HT by naïve provider (taught only the 2 techniques used in study), one placebo control interview.	Responses to HT treatments differed from placebo interview at a highly significant level (p<.0001), indicating HT is not a simple placebo. Quantitatively, subjects had fewer pain sensations after naïve HT than after trained HT. Qualitative descriptions indicated that subjects experienced relaxation, some pain relief, and various physical sensations during naïve and trained treatments, but more so from trained providers. Recipients reported more unpleasant non-pain sensations such as nausea and headache after receiving trained HT than naïve HT.	Healing Touch appears to be effective even when given by inexperienced healers. (Skeptics might say that if naïve healers do as well as trained healers, then it is the power of suggestion that produces pain relief.
Keller and Bzdek	1986	Tension headaches. Goal: reduce pain	60. Randomly assigned to TT or placebo touch	E: 5 minutes of therapeutic touch. C: 5 minutes of mock TT, with practitioner focusing mind on subtraction of sevens from 100.	Effectiveness of TT supported by the 28 (90%) of patients who had reduced headache pain on post-test compared to pre-test scores on all three pain questionnaires, both five minutes and four hours after TT treatments (highly significant: p<.0001)	Some factors not reported that may have effected study: overall duration of tension headaches and whether subjects had used long-lasting pain medications which might have still been in effect.
Dressler	1990	Chronic back pain, either untreated or unresponsive to other treatments.	27. 16 treated, 11 controls.	E: Light-touch Manipulative Technique (claims to move displaced vertebrae into position, even from a distance of several feet between practitioner and client.) Treatment done without subject’s knowledge. C: received same assessment (motion testing and palpation of spine) but no tx.	Of 16 treated subjects, 14 improved. Of the 11 controls, only 4 improved (significant: p<.01)	No mention of whether control and experimental groups had similar severity of initial symptoms. Criteria for assessment of symptoms and improvement not described.
Castronova and Oleson	1991	Chronic back pain. Goal: reductions in pain, somatization, anxiety, and depression.	37.  Randomized to healing (12), psycho-therapy (13) and control (n = 13)	Healing: scanning with healer’s hands to identify where there might be distress, energy blocks, or pain. Psychotherapy included discussions of pain and behavioral methods for reducing pain.	Healing and psychotherapy groups both showed nonsignificant decreases in somatization, anxiety, and depression relative to the control group. Healing group subjects reported after weeks one, three, and six that their pain was either all gone or nearly gone.	Results not statistically significant.
Peck	1996	Degenerative Arthritis Pain.	108.  Assigned randomly after a 4 wk. baseline period. 84 completed full study.	Treatments given once weekly for six weeks. One group received therapeutic touch (TT), the other received progressive muscle relaxation (PMR).	Significant differences demonstrated by both TT and PMR when comparing pain and arthritis assessments before and after treatments. TT decreased pain and distress. (both highly significant: p<.001)
Gordon, et al	1998	Osteoarthritis in one or both knees. Goal: examine effects on pain and physical disability.	27.  Divided into 3 levels of severity, then randomly assigned to 3 groups. 8 TT, 11 MTT, 8 C	E: therapeutic touch; MTT: mock therapeutic touch.	TT group demonstrated significant improvements (p <.04 - .0003) on 10 out of 13 of the Multidimensional Pain Inventory scales, and on activity levels. (p<.01 - .0005)	No blinds.
Dressen and Singh	1998	Chronically ill people with pains present for at least one year.	120. Randomly assigned to 4 groups: 3 experimental, control. Groups matched for demographics	Baseline measurements for all. Then: ten 30-minute treatments, administered twice weekly over five weeks. Reiki, False Reiki, Progressive Muscle Relaxation	Comparing pre- vs. post-treatment scores, Reiki proved significantly superior (p<.0001 - .04) to the other treatments on 10 out of 12 variables. At 3 month follow-up, changes remained consistent, and there were further, highly significant reductions in Total Pain Rating Index (p < .006) and in Sensory (p<.003) and Affective (p<.02) Qualities of Pain.	Didn’t assess some variables: seriousness of the illness, multiple experimenters, multiple sites, religiosity, and social support available.
Heidt	1981	Hospital patients (cardiovascular ward). Reduce anxiety.	90. Divided into 3 matched sub-groups.	TT: Five minute healings with therapeutic touch, MTT: 5 minutes of mock healings (“casual touch”). C.	TT subjects experienced a highly significant (p<.001) reduction in state anxiety, according to a comparison of pre-test and post-test means on A-state anxiety. TT subjects have a significantly (p<.01) greater reduction in post-test anxiety scores than MTT or C.	No blinds. Matched for level of anxiety, but not for other demographics. Medication effects not considered.
Quinn	1984	Hospital patients (cardiovascular). Goal: evaluate effectiveness of TT in reducing anxiety without physical contact.	60. Randomly assigned to 2 groups.	E: Five minutes of therapeutic touch. C: Five minutes of mock TT (same hand motions, but doing mental arithmetic)	Subjects receiving non-contact therapeutic touch had a greater decrease in post-test state anxiety scores than subjects receiving the control intervention. (p > .0005)	Medications not considered as confounding effect.
Quinn	1989	Recovery from open heart surgery. Goal: decrease anxiety (as assessed by self-eval, pulse and systolic bp	153	E: therapeutic touch for five minutes, E2: mock TT for five minutes; no eye contact. C: no tx.	No significant differences between the groups, though the greatest differences were noted in the TT group, and next greatest differences in mock TT. Post-hoc finding: diastolic b.p. was significantly lower in TT group.	Medications received by patients may have effected anxiety levels.
Hale	1986	Hospitalized patients (medical-surgical acute care). Goal: Reduce anxiety	48, randomly assigned to TT, MTT, and C	TT: 8 minutes of TT, MTT: 8 minutes of mock TT. Control.	Results showed no significant differences between the groups in their starting rate on any variable. At 2hours after treatment. The control group had lower post-intervention measures of STAI anxiety. (modest significance p<.05) and the second BP measurement was higher than the third. (p = .03)	This is the only study of therapeutic touch for anxiety showing a greater effect for the control group. May be because anxiety was evaluated 2 hours later, compared to five minutes in most studies. Healer’s level of training is not reported.
Olson and Sneed	1992	Stress following Hurricane Hugo. Goal: Reduce stress.	Volunteers who had worked during the hurricane itself, or had suffered loss (injury, property damage)	Non-contact Therapeutic touch, redirecting areas of accumulated tension. Treatment continued until healers felt maximum benefit had been achieved.	Mean anxiety scores were significantly reduced relative to pretreatment scores (modest significance p<.05), as they were when scores after treatment were compared with the control sessions. (modest, p<05). Anxiety scores in the treatment group were reduced by about half, while those in the control group were unchanged, or slightly higher. Treatment group had lower heart rate, blood pressure and respirations, and were higher in skin temp.,  but not to significant degree.	It is unclear whether control subjects were taken as a group to compare with the treatment group or whether only those eight in the control group were studied for comparison of TT versus self-controls.
Gagne and Toye	1994	Psychiatric inpatients. Goal: reduce anxiety.	31, randomly assigned to TT, MTT, and relaxation therapy.	TT: 15 minutes by a nurse or nursing assistant. MTT: 15 minutes by a different nurse. RT: by a chaplain. Single blind.	TT appears to have an anxiety-reducing effect equivalent to RT when subjective anxiety is the measure. Behavioral measurements favor RT as an agent (p <.001), perhaps because RT is directed at relaxing muscles.	MMT group started out with lower anxiety (despite randomization).
Fedoruk	1984	Premature infants. Reduce stress of routine handling.		TT, MTT (hand motions with nurse doing arithmetic out loud), and no treatment. APIB measurements were not blind, oxygen pressure measurements were.	Significant decrease in stress on the Assessment of Premature Infant Behavior (modest p<.05) A suggestive increase in APIB for MTT condition, perhaps because of stimulus of counting out loud. No significant differences in transcutaneous oxygen pressure (thought to reflect stress)	APIB results were not blinded, so there’s a chance of bias in the results.
Kramer	1990	Hospitalized children, age two weeks to two years, hospitalized for surgery, injuries, or acute illnesses. Goal: reduce stress.	30.	Baseline measures when children were known to be under stress. E: 6 minutes of TT. C: casual touch.	TT brought about greater stress reduction than casual touch at both the three-minute and six-minute intervals (modest significance p<.05 for each)	No randomization, no checks to match severity of presenting problems or severity of stresses. Since no blinds, researcher may have behaved in a less soothing manner with casual touch patients, and biased results.
Simington and Laing	1993	Institutionalized (hospitalized) elderly. Goal: Promote sleep by combining TT and back rub, thus reduce stress.	105. Randomly assigned by drawing from hat.	3 minutes of  TT given as a backrub or MTT (backrub with mental arithmetic). Control group.	TT group had significantly lower STAI anxiety scores than control group (modest p<.05). No significant differences noted between TT and MTT, or between MTT and control. Simington and Laing conclude that TT significantly enhances relaxation produced by a backrub.	Poor randomization. No checks for medication
Giasson and Bouchard	1998	Cancer (primarily lung cancer), hospitalized for palliative care.  Improve “general well-being.”	20. Randomized.	E: Non-contact TT for 15-20 minutes. C: Rest period for 15-20 minutes.	On assessment of general well-being, Significantly greater improvement in experimental group (highly significant p<.0015). Experimental group demonstrated highly significant increases in Well-Being scores (p<.001), while controls had no significant increases.	No blinds were used.
Leb	1996	Depression. Goal: Reduce depression (evaluated by depression inventory) and improve health of chakras (as measured by hand scans and pendulum assessment)	30.	E: two 30-45 minute Healing Touch sessions per week over a three-week period.	Highly significant decrease in depression for the treatment group (p <.001), which were sustained at one month after treatment. Mean hand scan measures showed highly significant changes (p<.001). Scores for change in the seven chakras were significantly higher  (p<.001). Chakras in the control group were initially closed, and remained closed during the study. Systolic BP in experimental group were significantly lower after sessions 2, 3, and 6. Respiration significantly lower in sessions 2-6.	Experimental group started out with higher depression scores, and with shorter mean length of time in therapy prior to the study. Pendulum testing should have been performed by someone other than the healer to avoid biasing results.
Robinson	1996	Grief in the recently bereaved.	22. Randomly assigned.	E: three TT treatments. C: 3 MTT treatments.	Statistical analyses confirmed that TT was beneficial in helping people deal with grief.	Report too brief for proper analysis.
Woods et al	1996	Alzheimer-type Dementia. Goal: Reduce disruptive behaviors.	57. Randomly assigned to TT, mock TT, C.	TT: given once in the morning and again in the afternoon for five to seven minutes over 3 days	TT showed a marked decrease in vocalizations compared to control group (modest, p<.04). Mock TT group showed a decrease approaching significance (p<.074) compared to control group.	Report too brief for proper analysis. Randomization, blinds, raw data, and statistical procedures not described.

Clinical and Laboratory Observations on Healing

Primary Researcher	Date of Pub.	Disease / Goal of Tx	Number of Subjects	Treatment Given	Results	Comments
Mialkowska	1986	Various. Many cases had been unresponsive to conventional therapies.	1684.	“Biotherapy” healing by Dr. Jerzy Rezmer, in Poland. Healing to the local body region requiring help, in 85% of cases. Generalized strengthening for other cases.	83% of cases reported improved well-being. In 53% of cases, the effects of the healing were confirmed by analytical and medical examinations. Greatest objective changes were in the urinary and nervous systems (esp. epilepsy); lowest in digestive system.	No details about diagnosis, or criteria for improvement. No control groups.
Dixon	1994	Various diagnoses. Patients at a general practice clinic in rural England.	25.	Healing by Mrs. Gill White. 45 minute healings on average.	Self-rated symptoms: 72% some improvement, including 32% with substantial improvement. Perceived change: 16% slightly better, 20% much better, 32% very much better. Doctors’ perceptions of change largely agreed with patient perceptions	An interesting note was this cost analysis: Out of 25 patients, 8 reduced or stopped their medication. Annual savings in prescription costs more than paid for the annual cost of the clinic.
Brown	1995	Chronic problems of at least six months duration which had not responded to conventional treatments, including drugs, specialist referrals and counseling.	32	Healers Del Ralph and Brenda Watters saw patients for 20 minutes weekly over 8 weeks, including a minimum of 15 minutes healing, with healer’s hands held near the body. Rest of time given to discussing pt’s condition.	Results of Medical Outcome Study indicated improvements in 7 variable: physical role limitation (p<.01), in emotional role limitation (p<.05), social function (p<.01), bodily pain (p<.01), mental pain (p<.001), vitality (p<.001), and general health. (p<.05) There was some improvement noted in physical function, it did not reach significance.
Darbonne, et al	In prep. for pub.	Chronic pain for at least 6 months, including neck and/or spinal, arthritic pain, or fibromyalgia.	19	4 Healing Touch treatments, lasting up to an hour.	Reductions in pain were registered on both the VAS – visual analogue scale (highly significant p<.005) and Chronic Pain Experience Instrument (p<.01). Subjects also reports greater relaxation, and a better overall perspective.	No attempt made to control for confounding factors.
Huang	1988	Paralysis.	19 hemiplegics, 24 paraplegics	Qigong masters emitted qi, using qi to “massage points of the patient once every other day.” Patient also did a qi gong exercise 1-2 times a day.	Before treatment, 37 of 43 needed support in walking. After treatment, 23 could walk without any help. Only 20 were still dependent on crutches. Before treatment 36 cases could not manage their own daily life (i.e. 7 could). After treatment, 34 were capable of taking care of themselves.	Without control groups, it’s impossible to know whether patients would have improved without the healing.
Fahrion	1995	Skin cancer: Basal cell carcinoma. (Does not remit spontaneously; standard treatment is surgical removal.)	10	Mietek Wirkus and Ethel Lombardi (well-known healers)gave healing for 30 minutes every other day for five days, healing done with hands 1-2 inches from body.	Four patients showed tumor reduction or elimination, confirmed by photographs. One patient had had hundreds of tumors removed in the past; healing stopped his recurrences.	Healing cost-effective: average cost per tumor treated was $160 versus $195 for surgical tx. Advantages: absence of pain, other side effects and scarring, and improvements in co-existing conditions.

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