What Is a Near-Death Experience?

A near-death experience, often shortened to NDE, is something a person reports after coming close to death. It has been studied for decades, and it is still debated. This article describes what the term means and what the numbers show.

What is a near-death experience?

A profound experience some people report after a close brush with death. Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist who has studied them for decades, describes them as profound experiences reported by some people who survive close brushes with death. A review in Frontiers in Psychology lists common elements. They include meeting deceased relatives, communicating with a light, and entering a new realm. They also include reaching a point of no return, reviewing one’s life, and feeling out of one’s body.

How common are they?

Not rare among cardiac arrest survivors. In a prospective study in ten Dutch hospitals, published in The Lancet in 2001, researchers followed 344 patients who were successfully resuscitated. Sixty-two (18 percent) reported some memory of the time of clinical death, and 41 (12 percent) described a core experience. Reviews of prospective studies report that roughly 10 to 20 percent of cardiac arrest survivors describe one. A 2015 French study of 295 patients found that 18 of 118 who gave reports (15.3 percent) met the criteria, and only one described a negative experience. Greyson estimates that about 9 million people in the United States alone have reported this kind of experience.

How do researchers measure them?

With a standard scale. The French study used the Greyson NDE scale, and counted an experience when the total score was above 6 out of 32. Greyson’s scale has 16 items. The Frontiers review adds that the core experience seems to be much the same across cultures.

Does anything predict who has one?

Not much. The Lancet study found that having an experience was not associated with how long the cardiac arrest lasted, with medication, or with fear of death beforehand.

What is still debated?

What causes them and what they mean. For explanations scientists have proposed, see Scientific Theories Explaining Near-Death Experiences. For what survivors say, see What People Commonly Report During a Near-Death Experience, and for the aftermath, How Near-Death Experiences Change People Afterward.