Near-death studies
Near-death studies is a field of research that studies the near-death experience. The field was originally associated with a distinct group of North American researchers that followed up on the initial work of Raymond Moody, and who later established the International Association for Near-Death Studies and the Journal of Near-Death Studies. Since then the field has expanded, and now includes contributions from a wide range of researchers and commentators worldwide. Research on near-death experiences is mainly limited to the disciplines of medicine, psychology and psychiatry.
Research – history and background
Precursors
According to the Handbook of Near-Death Experiences, traces of the Near-death experience can be located in ancient texts, such as Plato's Dialogues. During the 1880s and 1890s, near-death phenomena were part of the investigation of paranormal phenomena. Precursors to the field of near-death studies include the work of paranormal investigators, such as William Crookes and Frederick W.H. Myers, and the work of parapsychological societies, such as the Society for Psychical Research in England, and its American counterpart. The work attracted skepticism from contemporary branches of science. Also in the 1800s, two efforts moved beyond studying individual cases—one privately done by Mormons and one in Switzerland.According to sources the first academic note on a near-death experience was reported by Albert von St. Gallen Heim in 1892.
The early 1900s was a period of disinterest in the topic, only marked by occasional contributions, including the commentaries of Gardner Murphy and the research of Donald West. In 1948 West investigated the occurrence of psi-phenomena in a small sample of the British population. He found that "14 percent of his sample had undergone a hallucinatory experience and 9 percent had reported seeing apparitions of the dead". During the 1970s the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross attracted attention and she addressed the topic publicly. Interest in the topic was also spurred by autobiographical accounts, such as the books of George Ritchie.
Formative period – early profiles
Commentators note that the launch of the field of near-death studies started with work of Raymond Moody. Moody got interested in the subject of near-death experiences at the start of his career. In the mid-seventies, while doing his medical residency as a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, he conducted interviews with near-death experiencers. He later published these findings in the book Life After Life. In the book Moody outlines the different elements of the NDE. These features were picked up by later researchers, and the book brought public attention to the topic of NDEs.Early contributions to the field of near-death studies also include the work of Russell Noyes, who collected NDE stories from personal accounts and medical records. According to commentators his work signalled the first big shift in perspective within the field, pulling the methodology away from parapsychology and towards the principles of medicine. In the 1970s Noyes and Kletti reported on the phenomenon of depersonalization related to life-threatening danger. According to literature, Noyes and Kletti's 1977-article, "Depersonalization in Response to Life-threatening Danger", is the most cited article in the field of Near-death studies, as of 2011.
In 1977 a group researchers met in Charlottesville, Virginia, in order to prepare further investigations of the NDE-phenomenon. The late seventies saw the establishment of the Association for the Scientific Study of Near-Death Phenomena, an initial group of academic researchers, including John Audette, Raymond Moody, Bruce Greyson, Kenneth Ring and Michael Sabom, who laid the foundations for the field of near-death studies, and carried out some of the first NDE research in the wake of Moody's work. The Association was a forerunner to the International Association for Near-death Studies, which was founded in the early eighties and which established its headquarters at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. One of the first publications associated with this group of researchers was a treatment of several NDE case-reports originally collected by Fred Schoonmaker. The treatment was carried out and published by John Audette in 1979. This group of researchers, but especially Ring, was responsible for launching Anabiosis, the first peer-reviewed journal within the field. The journal later became Journal of Near-Death Studies.
Even though NDEs were introduced to the academic setting, the subject was often met with academic disbelief, or regarded as taboo. The medical community has been reluctant to address the phenomenon of NDEs, and funding for research has been limited. However, both Ring and Sabom made contributions that were influential for the newly established field. Ring published a book in 1980 called Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. In the book Ring identified the core near-death experience, with its corresponding stages. This early research was followed in 1984 by Ring's book Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience, where he described the mystical and transcendent features of the NDE, and the futuristic visions described by near-death experiencers. The early work of Michael Sabom also brought attention within the academic community. Besides contributing material to academic journals, he wrote a book called Recollections of Death which is considered to be a significant publication in the launching of the field.
Some of the early retrospective work was being carried out by Greyson and Stevenson who published their findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1980. The authors used questionnaires, interviews, and medical records in order to study the phenomenology of NDEs and suggested that social and psychological factors explained some, but not all, components of the NDE. Greyson has also addressed different aspects of the NDE, such as the psychodynamics of the experience, the typology of NDEs, the varieties of NDEs, and the biology of NDEs. In addition, he brought attention to the NDE as a focus of clinical attention, suggesting that the aftermath of the NDE, in some cases, can lead to psychological problems. As research in the field progressed, both Greyson and Ring developed measurement tools that can be used in a clinical setting. According to Kinsella, no other researcher, besides Moody, has done more to "influence public opinion on the subject of NDEs" than Kenneth Ring.
The 1980s also introduced the research of Melvin Morse, who profiled near-death studies. Morse and colleagues investigated NDEs in a pediatric population. They found that children reported NDEs that were similar to those described by adults. Morse later published two books, co-authored with Paul Perry, that were aimed at a general audience: Closer to the light: learning from children's near-death experiences and Transformed by the light: the powerful effect of near-death experiences on people's lives. British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick started to collect NDE stories in the 1980s, following their appearances in television programs. The responses from near-death experiencers later served as the basis for his book published in 1997, The Truth in the light, co-authored with his wife Elizabeth Fenwick. In the book the authors investigated more than 300 NDEs and concluded that the "subjective experience" is the key to understanding the phenomenon of NDEs. Co-operating with other researchers, such as Sam Parnia, Fenwick has reviewed and researched the potential relationship between near-death experiences and cardiac arrest
Early investigations into the topic of near-death experiences were also conducted at the University of Virginia, where Ian Stevenson founded the Division of Perceptual Studies in the late sixties. The division went on to produce research on a number of phenomena that were not considered to be mainstream. In addition to near-death experiences this included: reincarnation and past lives, out-of-body experiences, apparitions and after-death communications, and deathbed visions. Stevenson, whose main academic interest was the topic of reincarnation and past lives, also made contributions to the field of near-death studies. In a 1990 study, co-authored with Owens and Cook, the researchers studied the medical records of 58 people who were thought to have been near death. The authors judged 28 candidates to actually have been close to dying, while 30 candidates, who merely thought they were about to die, were judged to not have been in any medical danger. Both groups reported similar experiences, but the first group reported more features of the core NDE than the other group.
According to Loseu and colleagues, who published an analysis of the published literature in the field of near-death studies, there was a peak in the output of articles in the 15-year period between 1980 and 1995, followed by a decreasing trend.
Later period – new profiles, prospective studies
The first decades of near-death research were characterized by retrospective studies. From 1975 to 2005, some 2500 self reported individuals in the US had been reviewed in retrospective studies of the phenomena with an additional 600 outside the US in the West, and 70 in Asia. However, the late 1980s marked the beginning of prospective studies in the field. Prospective studies review groups of individuals and find who had an NDE. They had identified 270 individuals by 2005. Kovoor and colleagues performed a scoping review of research on NDE's in Cardiac Arrest situations. They identified a total of 60 prospective studies, 11 of which were included in their review.Pim van Lommel was one of the first researchers to bring the study of NDEs into the area of Hospital Medicine. In 1988 he launched a prospective study that spanned 10 Dutch hospitals. 344 survivors of cardiac arrest were included in the study. 62 patients reported NDE. 41 of these patients described a core experience. The aim of the study was to investigate the cause of the experience, and assess variables connected to frequency, depth, and content. Prospective studies were also taking place in the U.S. Schwaninger and colleagues collaborated with Barnes-Jewish Hospital, where they studied cardiac arrest patients over a three-year period. Only a minority of the patients survived, and from this group 30 patients were interviewable. Of these 30 patients 23% reported an NDE, while 13% reported an NDE during "a prior life-threatening illness".
In a prospective study from 2001, conducted at Southampton General Hospital, Parnia and colleagues found that 11.1% of 63 cardiac-arrest survivors reported memories of their unconscious period. Several of these memories included NDE features. Greyson conducted a 30-month survey of patients admitted to the cardiac inpatient service of the University of Virginia Hospital. He found that NDEs were reported by 10% of patients with cardiac arrest and 1% of other cardiac patients. Up to 2005, 95% of world cultures have been documented making some mention of NDEs. In all, close to 3500 individual cases between 1975 and 2005 had been reviewed by some 55 researchers or teams of researchers.
During the next decade, prospective studies were also starting to emerge from other parts of the world. In a study from 2010 Klemenc-Ketis and colleagues reported on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survivors, later admitted to intensive care units, at medical centers in Slovenia. 21.2% of the patients in the study reported NDEs. The researchers also found that "NDE occur more often in patients with higher petCO2 and pCO2"; "higher serum levels of potassium correlate with higher score on Greyson's NDE scale"; and "NDEs occur more often in patients with previous NDEs".
Based on the results from an analysis of scholarly NDE-related periodical literature, the decade between 2001 and 2011 signaled an expansion of the field of near-death studies by including new authors and new publication venues. Research has also entered into other fields of interest, such as the mental health of military veterans. Goza, Holden & Kinsey studied NDEs among combat veterans. They found, among other things, that combat soldiers reported "less intense" near-death experiences, compared to NDErs in the civilian population. The work of Goza and others is now known as Combat-related NDEs.
The first clinical paper from The AWARE-project, another prospective study, was published in 2014. The research was a multicenter observational study including US, UK and Austrian medical sites. In the study Parnia and colleagues found that 9% of patients who completed stage 2 interviews reported experiences compatible with NDEs. A follow-up study, AWARE II, was completed in November 2022 and published in 2023. The study reported that 28 participants completed interviews, with 11 reporting experiences suggestive of consciousness during cardiac arrest.
As of 2011 Bruce Greyson has the greatest output of material and remains the leading scholar in the field of near-death studies. Other researchers with a large output of material includes P. M. H. Atwater and neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick