Deliverance

Deliverance is a form of prayer in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, meant to free a person from spiritual affliction such as an evil spirit or a curse. For many Nigerian families it’s the first response when a relative becomes mentally unwell. It can sit alongside medical treatment. The harm comes when it replaces care, or when force is used.

Also called: deliverance prayer; deliverance ministry; a deliverance session. Ruqyah is a separate Islamic healing tradition.

What happens in deliverance

Practices vary from church to church. Usually a pastor or prayer team prays over the person, often alongside fasting. Some people attend one session; others stay at a prayer house or camp, sometimes for weeks. Many find real comfort and hope in it, and the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists says spirituality can benefit mental health.

In Nigeria

Pastors and imams are trusted, nearby, free and available at night. A psychiatrist is often none of those things, so the choice usually reflects access as much as belief. In a large survey in the south-west, education made no difference to whether people believed mental illness had spiritual causes.

Studies at Nigerian psychiatric hospitals found that between three and eight in ten people had seen a religious or traditional healer first. Across the population, though, most people with a mental health condition get no care at all.

Risks

The prayer itself isn’t the danger. These are:

Delay. At the Federal Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital, Yaba, people with schizophrenia who saw a healer first passed through almost six carers, on average, before a psychiatrist, and went longer with untreated psychosis.
Stopping medicine. Some are told to stop medication as proof of faith. In trials, about two in three people with schizophrenia who stopped their antipsychotic relapsed within a year, against one in four who kept taking it. Any change belongs with the prescriber.
Fasting and lost sleep. Long fasts and sleepless nights are risky for someone already underweight or unwell.
Isolation. Being kept from family, or not allowed to leave.
Force. In 2018 and 2019, Human Rights Watch found people chained in 27 of the 28 facilities it visited in Nigeria, including churches, Islamic centres, healing centres and some government-run ones, with beatings and food withheld as “fasting”. This is abuse.

What the law says

Nigeria’s National Mental Health Act bans anyone, including faith-based institutions, from using chains, shackles, handcuffs or ropes on a person with a mental health condition. The penalty can include up to five years in prison. Faith-based centres that provide mental health care count as facilities under the Act, so its consent rules reach them, and anyone who witnesses abuse must report it to the police. Human Rights Watch reported in 2026 that chaining continues despite the ban.

How it fits with treatment

Deliverance and treatment aren’t automatically in conflict. Plenty of people attend a prayer house and take their medication, and many Muslims do ruqyah and see a doctor. In good collaboration, the faith community carries the person spiritually and socially while a clinician treats the illness.

In a trial in Ibadan and in Kumasi, Ghana, health workers visited healers’ centres weekly and gave medicine for psychosis alongside the healers’ care. After six months, people had fewer symptoms and less disability than with usual care. Shackling also fell sharply once the healers were trained. WHO calls for this kind of collaboration.

If your family chooses deliverance:

keep taking prescribed medicine and keep hospital appointments
tell the doctor about the prayers, and the pastor about the medicine
agree in advance: no chains, no beating, no forced fasting
visit often, and make sure the person can leave

Deliverance vs spiritual attack and traditional healing

A spiritual attack is a belief about what caused the trouble; deliverance is a church’s response to it. A traditional healer may use herbs, divination and ritual instead. Clinicians can tell a spiritual crisis from a mental illness, though the two can overlap.

When to get help

If someone is in immediate danger, is being chained, beaten or starved, or has thoughts of ending their life, call 112 (or 767 in Lagos), or Safe Place Nigeria on 0800 800 2000. The full list is on our helplines page. Report abuse to the police, or to the National Human Rights Commission on 6472 (toll-free, weekdays 8am to 4pm). If it’s a child, call Cece Yara Foundation’s free 24-hour child helpline on 0800 800 8001.

Get medical care alongside prayer if someone hears or sees things others don’t, can’t eat or sleep, or isn’t making sense. For talking therapy that respects your faith, you can book a licensed therapist on Mytherapist.ng for faith-based counselling.