I see (religious) prayer as simply a form of deliberate enunciation or vocalisation of hope. One would likely only pray if there was even the smallest glimmer

I see (religious) prayer as simply a form of deliberate enunciation or vocalisation of hope. One would likely only pray if there was even the smallest glimmer of hope to begin with! Doesn't matter if it's a call for a miracle, there's still some dopamine activity there. The idea of encouraging the hopeless to pray as a method of bootstrapping themselves out of depression may simply be an appeal to a more cognitive self-realisation process. This simply by the act of vocalising what the individual hopes for.