For thousands of years, humans have whispered the same request into the darkness: “Please let this turn out differently.” But what exactly changes when we pray the world, the brain, or the person facing the world?

At 3:17 in the morning, a hospital corridor is almost silent.

Inside one room, a machine measures a patient’s heartbeat.

Outside, a family waits.

Someone folds their hands.

Someone closes their eyes.

Someone whispers a prayer.

The medical team has already done what medicine can currently do. The family cannot operate the machines. They cannot alter the laboratory results. They cannot negotiate with biology.

But they can pray.

This is where an ancient religious practice becomes a remarkably modern scientific question:

Can prayer change an outcome?

The question sounds simple until we ask what “change” means.

Could prayer make a tumour disappear?

Could somebody else’s prayer reduce another person’s pain?

Could prayer lower anxiety?

Could repetitive prayer quiet mental noise?

Could praying for someone make the person praying more compassionate?

Could prayer change the meaning of suffering even when it does not change the suffering itself?

These are different questions.

And science has produced different answers to them.

The First Question: Can Prayer Actually Be Tested?

Yes, but only if we define the experiment carefully.

Intercessory prayer means praying on behalf of another person. Researchers have attempted to test it using randomized controlled trials.

The basic experiment is straightforward:

Recruit patients.

Randomly divide them into groups.

Give everyone the same conventional medical treatment.

Arrange for one group to receive intercessory prayer.

Keep researchers and, where possible, patients unaware of group allocation.

Measure predefined outcomes.

Compare the groups statistically.

The difficulty begins immediately.

How do you create a genuine “no-prayer” group?

A patient assigned to the control group may still have a mother praying at home, a priest praying at church, a friend praying privately or thousands of strangers praying after seeing the patient’s story.

Researchers cannot easily control that.

Nor can they guarantee that every assigned prayer session was identical in intensity, duration or content.

A pill can be standardized.

A prayer cannot.

The Cochrane review of intercessory prayer eventually included 10 randomized trials involving 7,646 patients. Its overall conclusion was not that prayer had been disproved, but that the evidence was insufficient and inconsistent to establish a reliable clinical benefit.

That distinction matters enormously.

The Largest Experiments Did Not Produce a Simple Miracle

The STEP trial is one of the most important studies in the field.

It enrolled 1,802 patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery at six U.S. hospitals. Participants were divided into three groups, with intercessory prayer provided for some patients for 14 consecutive days. Researchers assessing complications were blinded to group assignment.

Among patients who did not know whether they were receiving prayer, complications occurred in roughly:

52% of the prayer group versus 51% of the non-prayer group.

There was therefore no evidence of a clinically meaningful protective effect.

A particularly strange secondary finding appeared among patients who were certain they were receiving prayer: complications occurred in about 59%, compared with 52% among patients uncertain about receiving prayer.

The researchers did not conclude that prayer caused complications.

That would be an unjustified interpretation.

Instead, the finding illustrates something more important: expectations can become part of the experiment.

Knowing that people are praying for you can itself change your psychological state.

And that is precisely why prayer is difficult to study.

Positive Studies Exist Too

The scientific story would be easier if every experiment had been negative.

They were not.

Some studies reported statistically significant effects.

One famous IVF study reported pregnancy rates of approximately 50% in the prayer group versus 26% in controls.

That sounds extraordinary.

But extraordinary findings require extraordinary replication.

The study subsequently attracted serious methodological and credibility concerns, making it unsafe to treat that single result as proof of supernatural intervention.

Other studies have also produced isolated positive findings.

The famous “retroactive prayer” experiment involving 3,393 patients who had previously suffered bloodstream infections reported a shorter hospital stay and shorter fever duration in the prayer group, although mortality did not differ significantly.

Such findings are intriguing.

They are not sufficient to establish a mechanism.

The correct scientific response to an extraordinary result is not immediate belief or immediate ridicule.

It is:

Repeat the experiment.

The Statistical Trap: A Significant Result Is Not a Miracle

Suppose a study reports:

P = 0.03.

That does not mean:

“There is a 97% probability that prayer worked.”

It means something much narrower about the probability of observing data at least that extreme under the statistical model and null hypothesis being tested.

There is also a second question:

How large was the effect?

A tiny effect can become statistically significant in a sufficiently large sample.

A dramatic effect in a small sample can disappear in replication.

This is why prayer research must distinguish:

statistical significance

from

practical significance.

If prayer reduces a hospital stay by a fraction of a day, that may be statistically detectable without being clinically transformative.

Conversely, a dramatic result that appears in one small experiment but repeatedly disappears in larger studies should not be treated as established evidence.

The broader evidence illustrates this problem. The Cochrane review found mixed results across mortality and other outcomes, with substantial heterogeneity between studies.

But What If We Have Been Asking the Wrong Question?

Here the story becomes much more interesting.

Suppose remote prayer does not reliably alter another person’s disease.

That would not tell us whether prayer changes the person doing the praying.

And this is where neuroscience and psychology enter.

Prayer can be:

petition,

reflection,

meditation,

confession,

gratitude,

social connection,

moral reflection,

emotional regulation,

or communication with God, depending on the believer.

These functions can overlap without being identical.

Prayer as a Change in Mental State

Imagine someone repeating the same prayer for ten minutes.

The words become rhythmic.

Breathing slows.

Attention narrows.

External distractions become less important.

The person stops calculating tomorrow’s problems for a while.

Something has changed.

We do not need to decide whether God exists to study that change.

Neuroscience can investigate what the brain is doing during prayer.

A 2009 fMRI study of Danish Christians found that improvised personal prayer recruited regions associated with social cognition, including the medial prefrontal cortex, temporoparietal junction, precuneus and temporopolar regions. The researchers interpreted this as evidence that believers may experience prayer partly as an interpersonal interaction with God.

A 2025 systematic review examining Christian prayer and attachment similarly found convergence involving the default mode network and theory-of-mind/social-cognition systems, although the authors emphasized that more research is needed. The review included 44 records.

A 2026 systematic review of religious and spiritual practices reported recurring involvement of the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, default mode network, insula, amygdala, hippocampus and temporoparietal junction, while emphasizing that different practices produce different neural patterns.

But there is an essential scientific warning:

Seeing the brain respond to prayer neither proves nor disproves God.

The brain also becomes active when we remember our parents, fall in love, solve equations or listen to music.

Neural activity tells us something about the mechanism of experience.

It does not automatically settle the metaphysical meaning of that experience.

Prayer, Repetition and the Quieting of Mental Noise

Prayer sometimes resembles meditation.

Repetition reduces the number of decisions the mind must make.

Structured breathing can slow physiological arousal.

A familiar sequence can provide predictability.

A predictable ritual can become an anchor when everything else feels chaotic.

But prayer is not simply meditation with religious vocabulary.

Meditation may involve observing thoughts without attaching to them.

Prayer may involve asking, thanking, confessing, surrendering or speaking to a perceived divine listener.

For a believer, the difference may be enormous.

For neuroscience, however, overlapping mechanisms can still be studied.

The fascinating question is therefore not:

“Is prayer secretly meditation?”

It is:

“Which effects come from repetition and attention, and which depend on the meaning attached to prayer?”

Prayer and Stress: Does It Change the Situation or the Person?

People often pray when they have little practical control.

A medical diagnosis.

An exam.

A financial crisis.

A dangerous journey.

The death of someone they love.

Prayer gives them something to do when there may be nothing practical left to do.

That can matter psychologically.

One experimental study randomly assigned participants to prayer, encouraging self-talk or control before a stressful task. Both prayer and self-talk reduced self-reported stress relative to control; prayer was also associated with lower blood pressure measures, although prayer and self-talk did not differ significantly.

This result is fascinating because it provides a non-supernatural explanation that remains compatible with the experience of prayer:

Prayer may change the person’s relationship with the stressor.

The building does not become safer.

The diagnosis does not disappear.

The uncertainty remains.

But the person may feel less psychologically alone while confronting it.

The World Health Organization itself treats spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs as a legitimate dimension of quality-of-life assessment, noting that beliefs can provide meaning, strength, comfort, belonging and coping—while also recognizing that religion can have negative effects for some people.

Prayer and Anxiety: The Comforting Ritual Can Have Two Faces

Prayer can interrupt repetitive worrying.

Instead of asking:

“What if?”

“What if?”

“What if?”

a person repeats a familiar prayer.

Attention has somewhere to go.

The ritual creates structure.

But the same mechanism can become harmful.

Suppose someone believes:

“If I do not pray exactly correctly, something terrible will happen.”

The prayer is no longer simply comforting.

It has become an anxiety-management ritual.

This is relevant to scrupulosity, a form of obsessive-compulsive symptoms involving excessive religious or moral fears.

Research distinguishes ordinary religious practice from pathological compulsions. A 2025 clinical review notes that scrupulosity can involve excessive praying, reassurance seeking and avoidance, while emphasizing how difficult the boundary can be when religious rituals themselves are socially accepted.

The lesson is not that prayer causes OCD.

Evidence does not support such a simple conclusion.

The important distinction is:

Does the ritual create freedom or does the person feel forced to perform it to neutralize fear?

Prayer and Emotional Regulation

Prayer can create a pause between emotion and reaction.

Anger arrives.

The person stops.

They pray.

They reconsider.

That pause can be psychologically important.

A prayer of confession may allow someone to articulate guilt.

A prayer of gratitude can redirect attention toward what remains.

A prayer for an enemy may force a person to consider another human being differently.

Research has found experimental associations between praying for relationship partners and increased forgiveness. One study involving 52 participants found greater willingness to forgive after praying for a romantic partner; a second study with 67 participants found increased forgiveness and selfless concern after four weeks of praying for a friend.

A cross-cultural randomized study involving 51 Americans and 100 Indians found that three minutes of prayer for a romantic partner reduced retaliation motives, with the effect observed across Christian, Hindu and Muslim participants in the Indian sample.

These findings do not demonstrate divine intervention.

They suggest something psychologically testable:

praying for another person can sometimes change the mental state of the person praying.

Prayer May Influence Behaviour but Not Automatically

Prayer can encourage self-questioning:

What kind of person am I becoming?

How should I treat this person?

What would be the right thing to do?

That may increase self-monitoring and moral reflection.

Research on prayer in romantic relationships has reported associations with lower aggressive tendencies, greater forgiveness and, in one experimental study, lower extradyadic romantic behaviour.

But these findings should not be transformed into:

Prayer makes people good.

Behaviour depends on belief, interpretation, community, personality and circumstances.

The same religious framework can inspire compassion in one person and guilt or fear in another.

Prayer is therefore not a behavioural switch.

It is part of a psychological system.

Prayer Before a Moral Decision

Imagine being angry with someone.

You could immediately send the message.

Or you could stop and pray:

What should I do?

That question creates psychological distance from the immediate impulse.

But here lies an intriguing experimental comparison.

What happens if the person does not pray but simply sits quietly for five minutes and thinks about their values?

If the outcome is identical, perhaps the active ingredient is reflection.

If prayer produces something different, the religious meaning may matter.

This is exactly the sort of question future experiments should investigate.

Prayer versus silence.

Prayer versus secular reflection.

Prayer versus positive self-talk.

Prayer versus meditation.

Only then can researchers begin separating the ritual from the belief attached to it.

Prayer for Someone Versus Prayer With Someone

These sound similar.

Psychologically, they are not.

Praying for someone can strengthen the emotional bond in the mind of the person praying even if the recipient never knows.

Praying with someone adds something else:

presence.

A hand may be held.

Words may be shared.

Fear may be acknowledged.

The message becomes:

“You are not facing this alone.”

That social component can itself be powerful.

Group prayer adds another layer.

People breathe together.

Speak together.

Repeat the same words.

Stand inside the same symbolic world.

It becomes a form of social coordination.

But group rituals can also create boundaries between insiders and outsiders.

Prayer therefore has both a private psychology and a social architecture.

Prayer and Loneliness: Can Someone Feel Less Alone While Alone?

This may be one of the most fascinating questions.

A believer may sit in an empty room and experience prayer as dialogue.

The room contains one physical person.

Psychologically, however, the person may experience another presence.

Science can study the experience.

It cannot use that experience alone to establish whether the supernatural listener exists.

This is similar to the neuroscience finding that personal prayer can recruit social-cognition systems. For believers who regard God as an intentional, responsive being, prayer may be experienced less like speaking into empty space and more like an interpersonal encounter.

That distinction is central.

A subjective experience can be real without its ultimate metaphysical explanation being scientifically established.

Prayer and Forgiveness

Prayer can change the mental distance between two people.

Instead of seeing an offender only as:

“the person who hurt me,”

prayer may encourage the person to consider:

their motives,

their weakness,

their circumstances,

their humanity.

That does not mean forgiveness requires forgetting.

It does not mean tolerating abuse.

It does not mean restoring trust.

Forgiveness and reconciliation are different psychological processes.

Recent research also illustrates why religious ideas can produce mixed effects. A 2025/2026 study of perceived divine forgiveness found that feeling forgiven by God could increase self-forgiveness, but self-forgiveness could sometimes reduce motivation to apologize; gratitude and humility provided a counteracting pathway toward reconciliation.

Again, prayer is not automatically good or bad.

Its psychological effect depends partly on what the belief means to the person.

Prayer and Suffering: The Deepest Question

This may be the real centre of the entire subject.

Prayer cannot necessarily remove suffering.

But it may change the question being asked.

At first:

“Why is this happening to me?”

Later:

“How do I survive this?”

And eventually:

“What can this experience mean?”

These are psychologically different positions.

Consider three types of suffering:

Type	Example	What prayer might influence
Physical	Pain, disease, injury	Coping, distress, perceived suffering
Psychological	Anxiety, fear, grief	Emotional regulation and reassurance
Existential	Meaninglessness, mortality, uncertainty	Meaning, hope, acceptance and identity

These should never be confused.

Reducing psychological suffering is not the same as curing physical disease.

And changing the meaning of suffering is not the same as removing its cause.

The WHO’s quality-of-life framework explicitly recognizes personal beliefs as potentially providing meaning, strength and coping while also allowing for negative effects.

That is a remarkably balanced way to think about prayer.

Prayer During Illness: Hope Without Magical Thinking

Serious illness often creates a brutal psychological paradox.

Modern medicine can provide treatment.

But it cannot guarantee outcomes.

Prayer can fill the space between treatment and uncertainty.

That may provide:

hope,

structure,

community,

acceptance,

and a sense of agency.

But prayer should not be confused with medical treatment.

The most defensible position is not:

medicine versus prayer.

It is:

medicine for what medicine can treat, prayer or spiritual practice for whatever psychological, relational or existential role it provides.

The two need not be enemies.

The 2026 Experiment Changes the Conversation

A particularly interesting new study moved away from distant intercessory prayer and tested proximal intercessory prayer—prayer delivered directly to the participant.

The randomized trial included 180 primary-care participants.

Ninety received five minutes of Christian prayer from a trained volunteer.

Ninety received music as the control.

Participants had clinically meaningful pain or anxiety.

The prayer group reported larger reductions in pain—roughly 1–2 points—and larger reductions in anxiety of approximately 2 points at some follow-ups.

This is worth watching.

But it does not establish a supernatural mechanism.

Why?

Because proximal prayer includes something remote prayer does not:

human contact.

Someone is physically present.

Someone is paying attention.

Someone is directing concern toward you.

That can influence expectation, emotional reassurance and social connection.

The study therefore opens a new question rather than closing the old one:

Is the therapeutic ingredient prayer itself, the meaning attached to prayer, the presence of another human being or some combination?

Prayer Versus Meditation

Prayer	Meditation
Often relational	Often observational
May involve God	May not require belief in God
Usually uses words or symbols	Often uses silence or attention
Can involve requests	Often involves awareness
Can create meaning and hope	Often emphasizes present-moment awareness
Can be communal	Can be solitary or communal

The overlap may lie in:

attention,

repetition,

breathing,

reduced distraction,

emotional regulation,

and structured reflection.

The difference may lie in meaning and perceived relationship.

Prayer Versus Talking to Yourself

Both can organize thoughts.

Both can externalize worries.

Both can create psychological distance.

Both can help someone formulate intentions.

But prayer introduces a perceived listener.

For believers, that listener is not imaginary in the ordinary sense.

That difference may alter emotional disclosure.

Science can investigate the psychological consequence of believing that someone is listening.

It cannot settle the metaphysical question merely by observing the brain.

Why People Pray Even When They Expect No Answer

This may be the strangest clue.

If prayer were only about obtaining outcomes, unanswered prayer should eventually destroy the practice.

Yet many people continue.

Why?

Because prayer can evolve.

At first:

“Please change this.”

Later:

“Please help me endure this.”

Eventually:

“Help me accept what I cannot control.”

Prayer can therefore move from petition to reflection.

From control to acceptance.

From outcome to meaning.

That may explain why prayer can remain psychologically valuable even when the external event does not change.

The Paradox of Control

There is something deeply human here.

We hate uncertainty.

Prayer provides an action when action is otherwise impossible.

You cannot control the diagnosis.

But you can pray.

You cannot control another person’s decision.

But you can pray.

You cannot reverse death.

But you can pray.

This creates a paradox:

Prayer may feel powerful precisely when a person admits that they are powerless.

Is that psychological control?

Spiritual surrender?

Or both?

Science cannot answer the theological part.

But psychology can study what happens when people move from fighting uncontrollable circumstances toward acceptance.

And there is an important warning:

Acceptance is not the same as giving up.

If practical action is possible, surrender should not become an excuse for avoiding it.

When Prayer Becomes Harmful

A balanced discussion must include the other side.

Prayer can become problematic when it is driven by:

obsessive guilt,

fear of punishment,

compulsive repetition,

reassurance seeking,

religious scrupulosity,

avoidance of necessary action,

blaming oneself for an unanswered prayer,

or rejecting appropriate medical treatment because of absolute religious certainty.

Clinical research on scrupulosity describes excessive praying and reassurance seeking as possible compulsive behaviours when they are driven by intrusive fears rather than freely chosen religious practice.

The important distinction is not:

religious versus non-religious.

It is:

chosen practice versus fear-driven compulsion.

The Evidence Map

Question	What science currently supports
Can intercessory prayer be tested?	Yes
Does remote prayer reliably improve major medical outcomes?	Not established
Have some studies reported positive findings?	Yes
Have large trials failed to show benefit?	Yes
Can prayer alter stress or emotional experience?	Some experimental evidence supports this
Does prayer activate identifiable brain networks?	Yes
Does neural activation prove or disprove God?	No
Can praying for someone affect the person praying?	Some studies suggest effects on forgiveness and relationship behaviour
Can prayer provide meaning during suffering?	Yes, and this is recognized within quality-of-life research
Can prayer become harmful?	Yes, particularly when incorporated into compulsive or fear-driven behaviour
Is prayer equivalent to meditation?	No, although mechanisms can overlap
Is praying for someone identical to praying with them?	No
Does prayer always improve behaviour?	No; effects depend on beliefs and interpretation

What Exactly Is Being Changed?

Perhaps the question “Does prayer work?” is too blunt.

A better series of questions is:

Does prayer change the external event?

Sometimes the evidence says we do not know.

Does prayer change the brain?

Yes. Prayer is associated with measurable neural activity, just as every meaningful mental activity is.

Does prayer change stress?

It can, particularly through expectation, attention, social support and meaning.

Does prayer change behaviour?

Some experimental studies suggest it can influence forgiveness and relationship-related behaviour.

Does prayer change suffering?

It may change psychological and existential suffering even when physical circumstances remain unchanged.

Does prayer prove that God intervenes?

Clinical trials cannot establish that theological conclusion.

What Future Research Should Test

The next generation of prayer research should stop treating “prayer” as a single intervention.

Researchers could compare:

remote prayer

versus

prayer with another person

versus

secular meditation

versus

positive self-talk

versus

quiet reflection

versus

ordinary social support.

They should pre-register primary outcomes, use larger samples, objectively measure physiological responses, measure participants’ beliefs and distinguish physical outcomes from psychological ones.

Most importantly, surprising findings need independent replication.

The scientific question is no longer simply:

“Does prayer work?”

It is:

“Which part of prayer produces which effect, for whom, under what circumstances?”

That is a much better question.

The Final Question: Does Prayer Change Reality or Our Ability to Face Reality?

Return to the hospital corridor.

The machines are still running.

The diagnosis has not changed.

The family is still waiting.

But the person praying may now be breathing more slowly.

They may feel less alone.

They may have found words for fear.

They may have remembered something worth being grateful for.

They may have decided to forgive someone.

They may have accepted something they cannot control.

None of these things proves that prayer changed the patient’s biology.

But none is meaningless either.

Perhaps prayer sometimes attempts to change the world.

Perhaps sometimes it changes the person.

Perhaps sometimes it changes the relationship between people.

And perhaps, for believers, it is something more than all three.

Science can investigate the measurable consequences.

It can examine the brain.

Measure stress.

Track behaviour.

Compare outcomes.

Calculate probabilities.

It can tell us when evidence is strong and when it is weak.

But there remains one boundary science cannot simply cross:

whether the experience of being heard corresponds to an actual supernatural listener.

That question belongs to another category of human inquiry.

The most scientifically honest conclusion, therefore, is neither “prayer works” nor “prayer is useless.”

It is more unsettling:

Remote intercessory prayer has not been shown to reliably change major clinical outcomes. Yet prayer can clearly be studied as a mental, emotional, social and behavioural experience—and those effects may be real even when a supernatural mechanism cannot be established.

The deepest possibility is therefore not that prayer changes reality like a hidden physical force.

It may be that prayer changes the human being who must live inside reality.

And sometimes, when everything else is beyond our control, that may be the first outcome people were actually seeking.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can science prove that prayer works?

Science can test predefined outcomes associated with prayer. It cannot use a clinical trial to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Has intercessory prayer been tested in randomized trials?

Yes. Major trials have included thousands of participants, but results have been inconsistent and large studies have not established a dependable remote-prayer effect.

Can prayer reduce anxiety?

Some studies report reductions in anxiety following prayer interventions, including a 2026 randomized trial of proximal Christian prayer. However, mechanisms may include social contact, expectation, attention and reassurance rather than requiring supernatural intervention.

Does prayer change the brain?

Neuroimaging studies show that prayer engages brain systems involved in attention, self-referential processing and social cognition. This demonstrates a neural correlate of prayer, not proof for or against God.

Can prayer become unhealthy?

Yes. When prayer becomes compulsive, fear-driven or part of scrupulosity, it can contribute to psychological distress rather than relieve it.

Is praying for someone the same as praying with them?

No. Praying with someone adds direct interpersonal presence and social support, whereas remote prayer tests a much stronger claim about effects without ordinary interaction.

Can prayer help people cope with suffering?

It can provide meaning, hope, structure and perceived support. WHO’s quality-of-life framework explicitly recognizes spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs as potentially relevant to coping and wellbeing.

The Unfoldings

Randomized trials can test some claims about intercessory prayer, but they cannot test every theological claim about prayer.

Large clinical studies have not established a reliable remote-prayer effect on major medical outcomes.

Some smaller or unusual studies have reported positive results, but isolated findings require replication.

Prayer can alter mental states involving attention, emotion, reflection and social cognition.

Prayer may reduce perceived stress without changing the external source of stress.

Praying for someone and praying with someone are psychologically different interventions.

Some studies suggest prayer can influence forgiveness and relationship behaviour.

Prayer may change the meaning of suffering even when it does not remove its physical cause.

The same ritual can be comforting for one person and compulsive or fear-driven for another.

A neural signature of prayer neither proves nor disproves God.

The most scientifically interesting future question is not simply whether prayer works, but which components of prayer affect which human outcomes.

Sources and further reading

• Cochrane Review — Intercessory Prayer for the Alleviation of Ill Health: 10 randomized trials, 7,646 participants; one of the principal systematic reviews of clinical intercessory prayer.
• STEP Trial: multicentre randomized trial of 1,802 coronary bypass patients at six U.S. hospitals.
• Prayer and Social Cognition: fMRI research examining formal and improvised prayer in religious participants.
• 2025 Systematic Review of Christian Prayer and Attachment Neuroscience: 44 records, examining convergence between prayer and attachment-related neural systems.
• 2026 Systematic Review of Religious and Spiritual Neuroscience: synthesis of neural findings involving attention, emotion regulation, self-referential processing and social cognition.
• 2026 Randomized Controlled Trial of Proximal Prayer: 180 primary-care participants, examining pain and anxiety outcomes.
• Prayer and Stress: randomized study comparing prayer, encouraging self-talk and control conditions.
• Prayer and Forgiveness: experimental studies involving romantic partners and friends.
• Prayer and Relationship Behaviour: experimental and longitudinal studies examining forgiveness, aggression and relationship behaviour.
• Scrupulosity: clinical literature on religious/moral obsessive-compulsive symptoms and compulsive prayer.

Government / authoritative resources

• World Health Organization — WHOQOL — WHO’s quality-of-life framework, including its Spirituality, Religiousness and Personal Beliefs instrument.
• WHOQOL-SRPB instrument — specifically addresses spirituality, religiousness and personal beliefs.
• U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — U.S. government resource for research into complementary and integrative health, including mind-body and whole-person approaches.