Healees' reports are a neglected resource in understanding and appreciating healing. Western medicine tends to focus on objective, measurable effects of treatments and to discount qualitative, subjective aspects of responses to therapies.

Healing is a wholistic treatment, reaching all levels of body, emotions, mind, relationships, and spirit. Healees' reports often reflect these effects - which extend way beyond symptomatic treatments.

However, as with those of healers, anecdotal reports of healees may be weakened for lack of clarity and specificity of descriptions. While this is inherently the nature of many effects of healing, it does make it difficult for anyone who is unfamiliar with healing to appreciate and accept these reports.

Healee reports should include as many as possible of the facors recommended for the reports of healers.

A part of the assessment of a reader regarding a healee's report will relate to the professionalism with which it is presented. It is helpful to the skeptic to see that the writer can distinguish between subjective and objective information, and can acknowledge the possibility of biases of belief systems that could shade the report in one way or another. Reports that only sing the praises of a particular healer or healing method are less likely to be impressive or convincing to those who are unfamiliar with healing.

Reports that include some of the following factors may be more helpful:

A brief sketch of the healee, to include any details that would help a reader to believe the report

Clear descriptions of the problem(s) that were addressed by the healer

Specific medical diagnoses of the problems

How long the problems were present

What conventional treatments had been applied, by whom, for how long, and with what results

Name of the healer, healing method(s) used, with a brief description of the method(s)

Subjective experiences during treatment

Frequency of treatments

Changes in the presenting problems that resulted following treatments, with a time course for these changes

How long the changes lasted

Consideration of any other factors that might have contributed to the changes (e.g. changes in stress levels, residual effects of any previous treatments)

Changes that occurred following healing that were not a part of the problems for which healing was sought