Marilyn Schlitz, PhD1, Harriet W. Hopf, MD2, Loren Eskenazi, MD, FACS3, Cassandra
Vieten, PhD1, and Dean Radin, PhD1

Abstract
Distant healing intention (DHI) is one of the most common complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM) healing modalities, but clinical trials to date have provided ambivalent support
for its efficacy. One possible reason is that DHI effects may involve variables that are sensitive to
unknown, uncontrolled, or uncontrollable factors. To examine two of those potential variables –
expectation and belief – the effects of DHI were explored on objective and psychosocial measures
associated with surgical wounds in 72 women undergoing plastic surgery. Participants were
randomly assigned to one of three groups: blinded and receiving DHI (DH), blinded and not
receiving DHI (Control), and knowing that they were receiving DHI (Expectancy). Outcome
measures included collagen deposition in a surrogate wound and several self-report measures. DHI
was provided by experienced distant healers. No differences in the main measures were observed
across the three groups.

Participants’ prior belief in the efficacy of DHI was negatively correlated with the status of their
mental health at the end of the study (p = 0.04, two-tailed), and healers’ perceptions of the quality
of their subjective “contact” with the participants were negatively correlated both with change in
mood (p = 0.001) and with collagen deposition (p = 0.04). A post-hoc analysis found that among
participants assigned to receive DHI under blinded conditions, those undergoing reconstructive
surgery after breast cancer treatment reported significantly better change in mood than those who
were undergoing purely elective cosmetic surgery (p = 0.004). If future DHI experiments confirm
the post-hoc observations, then some of the ambiguity observed in earlier DHI studies may be
attributable to interactions among participants’ and healers’ beliefs, their expectations, and their
motivations.

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