Prayer Slightly Outperformed Music in Reducing Self-Reported Pain and Anxiety in Small Trial, Researchers Caution

A randomized controlled trial at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that adult patients who received five minutes of in-person Christian prayer reported greater and more sustained reductions in pain and anxiety than patients who spent the same time listening to music.

Researchers recruited 180 adults from a family medicine waiting room. All participants had previously reported moderate to severe pain, anxiety, or both.

After their regular appointments, patients were randomly assigned to either the prayer group or the music group. Trained volunteers delivered the five-minute prayers face-to-face. Patients in the music group listened to recorded music for the same duration.

Researchers measured self-reported pain and anxiety levels immediately after the session, at two weeks, and at six weeks. Patients who received prayer showed larger immediate drops in pain intensity than those who listened to music. The difference remained statistically significant at the two-week follow-up.

Anxiety scores also fell more sharply in the prayer group right after the session, and those reductions stayed significant at both two and six weeks. Religious affiliation, religious intensity, and expectations of healing did not predict which patients improved. Benefits appeared across Christian and non-Christian participants and among those who did not anticipate any effect.

The study was published in The Annals of Family Medicine. It defined the intervention as proximal intercessory prayer, or in-person, face-to-face prayer directed at another person’s well-being. Katherine Jacobson, assistant professor of family and community medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and a study author, said 97 percent of participants were neutral or supportive of offering this type of prayer during medical visits.

"It was very well-received," she told Fox News Digital. Jacobson noted that the study could not prove prayer itself caused the improvements. Patients receiving prayer had direct human contact, including eye contact and gentle laying of hands, while the music group did not.

Researchers said future trials will include a control group that receives interpersonal contact without prayer. The authors stated that proximal intercessory prayer could serve as a low-cost, non-pharmacologic complement to standard medical care. They suggested trained Christian volunteer prayer practitioners could be integrated into outpatient settings for interested patients.

Fox News reported that prayer is the most used form of complementary medicine in the United States, relied on by 43 percent of Americans, according to statistics cited in the study.