The Effect of Religious and Spiritual Interventions on the Biological, Psychological, and Spiritual Outcomes of Oncology Patients

Abstract

In addition to biomedical forms of treatment, many cancer patients have elected to use complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) of a spiritual or religious nature. However, the effectiveness of such spiritual and religious interventions is uncertain. Using a meta-ana-lytic approach, the present study synthesized available treatment-outcome studies on spiritual and religious interventions for cancer patients to determine the efficacy of such interventions. Effect sizes were calculated for three types of outcome measures: biological, psychological, and spiritual. The authors found that nondrug spiritual and religious interventions produced small to moderate effect sizes for treatment versus control comparisons and small effect sizes for pre— versus posttreatment comparisons. Studies that used psychedelic drugs to promote spiritual experiences produced large effect sizes for both treatment versus control and preversus posttreatment comparisons. Finally, they found that, overall, treatment versus control comparisons produced larger effect sizes than did preversus posttreatment comparisons. Limitations of the studies discussed in the present meta-analysis included the lack of control groups, randomization, and a large number of participants. The results suggest that there is a shortage of sufficiently detailed, high-quality treatment outcome studies examining the efficacy of spiritual and religious interventions for oncology patients.