Why forgive?

Learning to forgive can lower your depression and anxiety.

The evidence base

Does the REACH Forgiveness Workbook actually work?

It’s a fair question, and one we have spent years working on. Below is what the research shows, what it does not yet show, and where you can read it for yourself.

The headline study

International REACH forgiveness intervention: a multisite randomised controlled trial

Ho, Worthington, Cowden, Bechara et al. · BMJ Public Health, 2024 · Trial NCT04257773

  • over 4,500 participantsThe largest randomised controlled trial of an interpersonal forgiveness intervention conducted to date.
  • 6 sites in 5 countriesColombia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Africa, and Ukraine.
  • February 2020 – September 2021When the trial ran.

How to read the charts

  1. Two groups. Half the participants did the workbook straight away; the other half waited two weeks for it.
  2. Same questions, twice. Everyone answered standard questionnaires before, and again two weeks later.
  3. The bars. Each bar is one group’s average score two weeks later. Lower is better: less ill will, fewer symptoms. The table under the charts gives the scores from before and the effect sizes.
See the numbers as a table

What it does not show

The effects are definitively established only at a two-week follow-up. Improvements in depression and anxiety continued to four weeks, but because the waitlist group eventually received the same materials, the trial could not test how long the benefit lasts.

Read the paper

How much forgiveness work is enough?

A useful question for anyone planning a group or a curriculum. Across the wider forgiveness literature, benefit broadly scales with time invested. But the international trial found something encouraging: on forgiveness of the target hurt, the 2–3 hour self-directed workbook performed comparably to a six-hour group program.

2–3 hours

The tested workbook

The version used in the international trial. This is what our Forgiveness Groups work through.

Publications

More research from the Human Flourishing Program on the blog →

The workbook the trial’s participants used is the one on this site

Free, in three versions: interactive, a PDF, and a PDF adapted for churches.

See the workbooks Run it with a group