The Tapping Evidence Base
Other Physical Conditions

The Effect of Spiritual Emotional Freedom Technique (SEFT) Therapy on Reducing Labor Anxiety in Primigravida

Emilia, E. · Archives of The Medicine and Case Reports · 2024

Randomized trial👥 26 participants⚖️ vs. control group (n=13) vs treatment group (n=13)Preliminary✓ Source-checked📍 Indonesia
In plain English. 26 first-time pregnant women were split into a group getting Spiritual EFT sessions and an untreated group. The treated group's labor anxiety dropped noticeably while the untreated group's stayed exactly the same. It's a small quasi-experimental study, so larger and more rigorous replication would strengthen confidence.

What they found

26
people took part

Labor anxiety in the treatment group decreased from 29.83 (pretest) to 21.77 (posttest) after 3 SEFT sessions, while the control group's score remained unchanged (28.08 to 28.08).

How the study worked

Who took partprimigravidas (first-time pregnant women) (n=26)
What they didIn a randomized controlled trial, participants were randomly assigned to receive tapping or a comparison condition, then measured and compared.
Compared withcontrol group (n=13) vs treatment group (n=13)
Measured withlabor anxiety score

💡 Where this could help

Picture a woman pregnant for the first time, anxious about labor, in a setting where prenatal mental health support is minimal. If spiritually-framed tapping continues to calm labor anxiety this reliably, it could become something midwives teach in just a few sessions before delivery, giving first-time mothers a practice they can administer on themselves and carry with them into the delivery room itself, with no midwife needed to walk them through it in the moment.

🔬 What to study next

This is a tiny sample, so the first priority is simply a larger trial — but it's also a rare chance to pair anxiety scores with objective labor physiology: does salivary cortisol drop, does heart-rate variability rise, and does that translate into measurable birth outcomes like labor duration or reduced need for pain medication or epidural? Tracking maternal-infant bonding and postpartum mood in the weeks after delivery would show whether calmer labor carries forward into the fourth trimester.

The full record

DesignRandomized trial
Participants26 people
Populationprimigravidas (first-time pregnant women)
Comparison groupcontrol group (n=13) vs treatment group (n=13)
Outcome measureslabor anxiety score
JournalArchives of The Medicine and Case Reports
Year2024
CountryIndonesia
LanguageEnglish
MethodEFT / tapping
Publication typeStudy / trial
Verification✓ Confirmed against the primary source
Verification note. Same internal note as record #3-style flag: rigor.notes describes this as 'quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design' while the record's design field says 'rct' — journal source describes a quasi-experimental method, so design field may be mislabeled, though not changed here per instructions.

Read the original study →

Cite this study

APA

Emilia, E. (2024). The Effect of Spiritual Emotional Freedom Technique (SEFT) Therapy on Reducing Labor Anxiety in Primigravida. Archives of The Medicine and Case Reports. https://doi.org/10.37275/amcr.v5i1.478

This record is part of the Tapping Evidence Base — an openly-sourced, fully-referenced directory of the research on EFT/tapping. Explore more studies on Other Physical Conditions

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THE TAPPING EVIDENCE BASE Other Physical Conditions 26 participants WHAT THEY FOUND Labor anxiety in the treatment groupdecreased from 29.83 (pretest) to 21.77(posttest) after 3 SEFT sessions, while… Randomized trial · 26 participants Emilia · 2024 · evidence.thetappingsolution.com