Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Following Near-Death Experiences
📄 Original study ↗📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
People who survive a brush with death sometimes report vivid near-death experiences (NDEs) — tunnels of light, life reviews, deep peace. But do those powerful memories haunt them like PTSD flashbacks? This study compared 148 NDErs with 46 people who came equally close to dying without the experience. NDErs did show more intrusive memories — the experience kept replaying — but they did not avoid thinking about it the way trauma survivors typically do. Their distress scores fell well below clinical PTSD levels. The fascinating takeaway: NDEs imprint on memory through positive intensity, not fear, arguing against dismissing them as pathological dissociation and supporting the view they are genuinely transformative.
Research Notes
Only study in the library directly measuring PTSD symptom profiles in NDErs. Supports the view that NDEs produce vivid, intrusive memories through their positive-affect quality rather than the fear-driven avoidance seen in PTSD — relevant to Controversy #7 (NDE consciousness/survival) and to the broader question of whether NDEs are pathological dissociative events or transformative experiences.
A cross-sectional survey compared posttraumatic stress symptoms in 148 near-death experiencers and 46 individuals who came close to death without NDEs, using the Impact of Event Scale (IES). NDErs scored 9.0 points higher on the overall IES (95% CI = 3.4–13.7), but the elevation was confined to intrusive re-experiencing symptoms; avoidance symptoms did not differ between groups. Multiple regression confirmed NDEs as a significant predictor of intrusion (B = 7.59, p < 0.001) but not avoidance, after controlling for demographics and event characteristics. NDErs' scores fell 1.2 SD below a clinical PTSD criterion sample, suggesting a nonspecific stress response rather than clinical PTSD.
Links
Related Papers
Cites
Same Research Program
- Incidence and Correlates of Near-Death Experiences in a Cardiac Care Unit — Greyson, Bruce (2003)
- Consistency of Near-Death Experience Accounts over Two Decades: Are Reports Embellished over Time? — Greyson, Bruce (2007)
- Which Near-Death Experience Features Are Associated with Reduced Fear of Death? — Pehlivanova, Marieta (2022)
- Near-Death Experiences with Reports of Meeting Deceased People — Kelly, Emily Williams (2001)
Companion
- Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands — van Lommel, Pim (2001)
- A systematic analysis of distressing near-death experience accounts — Cassol, Helena (2019)
- The Near-Death Experience Content (NDE-C) scale: Development and psychometric validation — Martial, Charlotte (2020)
- Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in the Blind: A Study of Apparent Eyeless Vision — Ring, Kenneth (1997)
Also by these authors
Epistemological Implications of Near-Death Experiences and Other Non-Ordinary Mental Expressions: Moving Beyond the Concept of Altered State of Consciousness
AWARE--AWAreness during REsuscitation--A prospective study
Terminal lucidity: A review and a case collection
More in Nde
The Central Clinical Relevance of Near-Death Experiences in Acute Care Contexts
Explanation of Near-Death Experiences: A Systematic Analysis of Case Reports and Qualitative Research
Neuro-Functional Modeling of Near-Death Experiences in Contexts of Altered States of Consciousness
AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A Multi-Center Study of Consciousness and Awareness in Cardiac Arrest
Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness
📋 Cite this paper
Greyson, Bruce (2001). Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Following Near-Death Experiences. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1037/0002-9432.71.3.368
@article{greyson_2001_ptsd,
title = {Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms Following Near-Death Experiences},
author = {Greyson, Bruce},
year = {2001},
journal = {American Journal of Orthopsychiatry},
doi = {10.1037/0002-9432.71.3.368},
}