Walach, H, Bösch, H, Haraldsson, E et al. · Forschende Komplementarmedizin und klassische Naturheilkunde = Research in complementary and natural classical medicine · 2002 · DOI
This study tested whether distant healing—treatment from healers who don't meet you in person but work with your name and photo—might help people with ME/CFS and related conditions. Researchers randomly assigned 400 patients to receive healing, no healing, or healing without knowing about it, to see if the treatment itself works or if belief in it creates the benefit. They measured mental health over 6 months to see if distant healing made a difference.
ME/CFS patients have limited effective treatment options, making exploration of diverse therapeutic approaches important for clinical practice. This study's rigorous 2×2 factorial design—separating expectation from specific effects—provides a methodologically sound approach to evaluating complementary therapies that many patients actually use, potentially informing shared decision-making.
This is a study protocol describing a trial design rather than reporting results; it presents no efficacy data and therefore proves nothing about whether distant healing works. The study cannot establish causation even if completed, as it measures mental health summary scores alone without objective biomarkers or functional outcome measures specific to ME/CFS.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
Spotted an error in this entry? Report it →