Faith Healing is no Cure: Docs
(Times News Network)
With malice towards one & all
Mumbai: Merlyn D’Souza, a musician, doesn’t count herself among Pastor Benny Hinn’s fans. “I came out of curiosity but I was inspired by what I saw around Me.”, she says. “The music created the right mood. Benny was a great orator & to see faith bringing many people together from all walks of life was extraordinary.”
It is easy to see how this combination of stirring music, commanding rhetoric & a collective ebullience helps energize people, in much the same way as a rock concert galvanizes its audience. But does healing actually happen?
Experts in the field of psychology say there is no proof whatsoever to show that illness can be cured by faith healing. Some say, however, that there is a psychological factor at work in illness, which is played on at such prayer gatherings.
“Call it the placebo effect” says psychiatrist Rajesh Parikh. “Studies have shown that even in the worst of illnesses, when people think they are taking medicines, there is a 40% chance that they will get better. This is why, in the US, all medicines have to show an efficacy percentage much higher than the 40% to be passed by the FDA”
Dr. Parikh cites a mid-‘70s’ U.S. study on faith healing, which shows that a constellation of six factors can have a similar effect. The recipe includes enormous arousal of hope & emotion, the provision of rationales for individual misfortune, examples of successful healing, highly susceptible humans & finally, simple faith. “All doctors know that if patients believe they will get better, they will,” says Dr Parikh.
How does this explain stories of lame people walking at these meetings? In some cases, says doctors, it may be temporary hypnotism. “In the 19^th century there were experiments with hypnosis, in which a patient would be told that he or she will be right, & the symptoms temporarily went away”, says psychoanalyst Shailesh Kapadia, adding however that this only works with psychosomatic illnesses. “As in the cases of what used to be called hysterical blindness.”
A study conducted by Jaslok & Nair hospitals revealed that 40% of patients were depressed or anxious. “In cases with a significant psychological factor, a gush of energy may certainly enable the person to get up & walk a few steps,” says psychiatrist Harish Shetty.
However, he says patients with a genuine physical or neurological problem can never be healed in this way. For this reason a paraplegic like Christopher Reeves is unlikely to be called upon at such meetings, adds another expert.
Both Dr Kapadia & Dr Shetty attribute the recent, disturbing rise in the number of faith-healers, religious TV channels & New Age cures to the general sense of anxiety & insecurity.