Mystical Angels

Why isn't spiritual healing part of the Hospital experience?

They actually did experiments in USA and parts of Europe where they contrasted the healing experience of someone who combined prayer and a change of lifestyle WITH their treatment options, against those who pursued treatment options WITHOUT prayer and lifestyle changes. The results were really interesting. The first group normally responded well to their treatment and had a far less likely chance of relapse. The second group did not come out as well as the first with approx 30% less success. Mind you, this was not a long-term experiment, so we don't know the outcome over a period of a year. But shouldn't it be universally promoted that a sick person stands a much better chance at making a full recovery if they make provision for their spiritual welfare as well as the physical. What would you do??? There are many sources. This one is the most comprehensive: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficacy_of_prayer

Public Comments

1. Because it is bs.
2. I don't know where you are getting this nonsense, but there has never been any study which showed that prayer helps healing.
3. It's the placebo effect -- well documented.
4. Bigger, more well-controlled studies have found the opposite. It's not an evidence-based practice and has no place in evidence-based medicine.
5. I'm not sure a change of lifestyle should be considered spiritual, such as changing dietary habits. Also, there are studies that show prayer has as much effect on a patient's recovery as not praying. So the patients' improvement in this case was probably due to changes in their lifestyle, not the prayer part, making their recovery very non-spiritual.
6. its a placebo... and they do use it. also ive read something about that with the exact opposite results odd...
7. Let's see your sources. I hear about these "studies" all the time but no one can ever seem to direct me to them. My guess is that hospitals do not make spiritual healing a part of the treatment regimen because there's no real evidence spiritual healing, like so many "alternative" healing strategies, does anything beyond enrichening their practitioners. Edit: I wouldn't consider a user-edited Wikipedia article to be a good source, but nontheless I followed the few links there to scientific studies and found something quite interesting. In spite of the article's somewhat positive tone regarding the efficacy of prayer, the study abstracts don't share the authors' enthusiasm. Take a look for yourself; it's all there.
8. If someone tried to shove a spiritual plan on me, I'd be pissed, which could elevate my blood pressure, which would compromise my recovery. And from similar studies that I've read, those are often highly biased and riddled with confounding variables. Basically, you can't base any conclusion off of the information gathered. Lifestyle changes? Yes, like exercise, eat healthy, and stop smoking? Sure! Makes sense. Get down on your withered knees and pray? Nah. It comforts some people, so good for them, but universally? No. It's almost like a placebo effect. Almost, not quite. The patients think that they're receiving "treatment," but they're not.
9. That's nice and all, but likely, the cause is the fact that "prayer" causes you to focus your consciousness on a desired outcome. This channels your energy into making the cure more effective. It doesn't matter what you pray to. You could pray to the table lamp across the room, as long as you manage to convince yourself that the table lamp has some sort of special healing properties. "The golden incandescent light heals me!" How would you implement this as an actual funded therapy? It isn't currently funded because there are too many slippery legal slopes involved in presenting something "spiritual" as institutionalized therapy. How do you go about convincing patients that the table lamp is holy? That kind of unsupported belief has to come from within. It's not an impossible proposition, and there's no reason why we couldn't make better use of prayer-like forms of meditation and the placebo effect. You just have to come up with a consistent documented program that the AMA can sign off on that the insurance companies will sign off on, not to mention the FDA and that the various legal departments involved can defend when patients inevitably go ahead and die, anyway.
10. actually spicoli, there have been numerous studies published that show this. you can account it to a placebo effect if you want, but the data are what the data are
11. Source please? I think you misread the study. The one I know about had three groups: (I) Group that was prayed for but did not know it was being prayed for; (II) Group that was prayed for and knew it was being prayed for; (III) Group that was not prayed for and was not told it was being prayed for. Groups (I) and (III), that is both of the groups who had no reason to believe they were being prayed for had identical outcomes, but Group (II), the group that knew it was being prayed for had WORSE outcomes than the two groups who didn't know. Not the outcome you want to tout, is it?
12. Actually there was an experiment that showed a control group that did receive prayers responded worse than a group that didn't receive prayers. THere's a reason they say that laughter is the best medicine. It's often a matter of attitude in the patients, nothing to do with prayer or not. A doctor's main duty is to heal the real injury. If they can help emotionally they will do that as well.