A study of the effectiveness of distant healing in alleviating symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression

This study explored whether distant healing could be beneficial in alleviating symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression as well as in strengthening one's sense of optimism and spirituality. Distant healing refers to any form of healing that one or more individuals perform at a distance, using nonphysical means, with the intent of improving the well-being of another person or organism. A time-series control group design experimental approach was used to address these questions. One group received distant healing for 4 weeks ( n = 12); the other group received no additional treatment ( n = 8). Participants were clients and clinicians recruited from a local mental health clinic. All participants completed 5 measures at 3 different times in the study: (a) the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS), (b) Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI-II), (c) Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), (d) Life Orientation Test-Revised (modified) (LOT-R), and (e) Spiritual Well-Being scale (SWB). Participants completed these measures the week before, the week after, and 5 weeks after the experimental period. A questionnaire examining changes in physical, psychological, and spiritual well-being was completed by all participants after the experimental period. For all 2-way repeated measures ANOVAs that were performed with both the entire sample (N = 20) and with the clinicians alone (n = 15), no significant effects (p < .05) were noted both between- and within-groups for any of the study measures. Overall, improvement was noted in most measure results for both the control and treatment groups---both for the complete sample (N = 20) and for the clinician-only sample (n = 15). However, it is not possible to make any conclusions regarding the efficacy of distant healing based on these results. A larger sample size is needed to determine whether distant healing might have had an effect on the variables measured in this study.