Prayer does have place in medicine

A recently published book The Faith Factor: Proof of the Healing Power of Prayer (Viking Penguin, 1998) by Dr. Dale A. Matthews, and another book to be published next year, The Healing Power of Faith (Simon & Schuster) by Dr. Harold G. Konieg, both discuss the relationship between spirituality and health.

My own interest in the subject goes back to earlier years in my clinical practice. In 1978, the Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Volume 1, Number 1, contained an article titled “Frequency of Church Attendance and Blood Pressure Elevation.” This study concluded that there was a consistent pattern of lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures among frequent church goers as compared to infrequent attendees. According to the study, this lowered blood pressure was not due to the effects of age, obesity, cigarette smoking of socioeconomic status.

Care must be taken in defining a cause-effect relationship in areas where experimental methodology is often less rigorous; however, medical studies are often now more willing to accept a more direct relationship between spirituality and improved health.

In general, many of the more recent studies in this area have shown that people of faith, those who are believers, tend to die prematurely less often and recover from medical and surgical problems more rapidly than nonbelievers.

Dr. Larry Dossey has written Healing Words: The Power of Prayer and the Practice of Medicine (Harper San Francisco, 1995) and has lectured extensively about the power of prayer in healing. His interest and expertise in mind-body interventions have convinced him of the positive power of prayer as a medical intervention.

Authorities have begun to speculate on why faith and believing heals. Several possibilities have been postulated:

• People of faith are often able to better handle stress because of their ability to relinquish their need for control to a high being. The need for perfection and control is one of the most disruptive and stressful components in our society today. As life becomes more complex, perfection and control are more and more difficult to achieve and therefore victims of this problem are more numerous. Those with the ability to “let go” and relinquish their struggle before it becomes harmful have a powerful mechanism to improve their health.

• People of faith are, more often than not, people of hope. Feelings of hopelessness and helplessness are powerful contributors to anxiety and depression. People of faith and hope in an organized structure such as a religious setting, tend to surround themselves with others of similar positive and optimistic beliefs. This helps support and positively influence the members of the religious group.

• Spiritual frameworks often promote elements of self-respect that include avoiding abusive behaviors such as smoking, abusing alcohol or drugs and adhering to medical advice designed to improve health.

I will be discussing this topic again in the future.

Copyright c 1998 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.