BALTIMORE — A randomized controlled trial at the University of Maryland School of Medicine found that five minutes of proximal intercessory prayer reduced pain and anxiety in primary care patients compared to a music control group. The study was published in the May/June 2026 issue of Annals of Family Medicine.
Researchers enrolled 180 patients from a university family medicine practice who reported clinically significant pain or anxiety. After their medical appointments, participants were randomly assigned to receive either five minutes of Christian intercessory prayer from a trained volunteer—with laying-on-of-hands—or five minutes of soft music as a control. Participants were followed up at two and six weeks.
Prayer group participants reported greater pain reductions immediately after the session and at the two-week follow-up compared to the music group. The difference in pain reduction between the groups was not statistically significant at six weeks. Prayer group participants also showed greater reductions in anxiety scores immediately after treatment, and this improvement persisted at both the two- and six-week follow-ups.
Black participants reported larger reductions in both pain and anxiety following prayer. The study population was predominantly Black, female, and low-income. Ninety-seven percent of prayer recipients were neutral, agreeable, or strongly agreeable to having proximal intercessory prayer available during future medical visits. No participants reported adverse events.
Joshua W. Brown, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University and Director and Co-founder of the Global Medical Research Institute, said, "The prayer intervention was effective regardless of the patient's faith or no faith." He added, "Our findings add to research showing how prayer changes brain function in ways that promotes health."
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Indiana University, and the Global Medical Research Institute. Funding was provided by a Global Medical Research Institute MESH Grant. The trial was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov under identifier NCT07565142 and approved by the University of Maryland Baltimore Institutional Review Board.
Blinding participants or prayer practitioners was not possible without undermining the ecological validity of the intervention. The authors noted that placebo effects and non-specific factors such as human presence and touch cannot be fully ruled out. They recommend future studies include a control condition with interpersonal contact and touch but without prayer to better isolate proximal intercessory prayer’s specific effects.