An American doctoral student who has worked for 17 years in the intensive care unit, spoke about the results of her research, which was devoted to studying the experience of children who have experienced clinical death.
“How old do you think a person must be to survive a near-death experience? - addresses the readers of the Daily Mail tabloid, PhD Penny Sartori. - Probably most would say that he must be old enough to be able to build a story or describe his feelings in a language we understand. However, there is evidence that children as young as six months have seen vivid images and retained memories of them over the years. Of course, no one can look into the mind of a child, but let's consider a case described in the medical journal Critical Care Medicine."
Then the Ph. D., who has worked for 17 years in the intensive care unit, talks about the results of a study by colleagues who published in a medical journal the story of a six-month-old boy who almost died due to a serious illness.
The doctors, who continued to be in contact with the child's parents, learned that three years later the boy had told his relatives the shocking news: his grandmother was dying. Having uttered this phrase, the child asked only one question: "When she goes to meet God, will she go through the same tunnel?"
Other young children have reported similar experiences, Sartori said.
“Take, for example, 4-year-old Tom, the son of a British soldier named Harry,” Penny continues. - A boy who complained of severe abdominal pain was admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of acute intestinal obstruction. He was on the verge of death, but managed to survive. A few months after being discharged, Tom walked with his father and asked him to take him to “that” park. When Harry asked which park he was talking about, the child replied that when he was in the hospital, he had to go through a tunnel. Then he saw a park with lots of children and swings, surrounded by a white fence. Tom tried to climb over the fence, but an unknown person stopped him, explained that “the time had not come yet” and sent him back to the hospital through a tunnel."
The woman says that children see the same things as adults who have experienced clinical death: a tunnel, a bright light, meetings with deceased relatives and an order to return to life. But most often they remember the feeling of boundless happiness, which makes such a strong impression on them that children even try to commit suicide in order to return to the feeling of bliss. Fortunately, this is rare.
Dr. Phyllis Marie Atwater argues that children often come back because they don't want to upset their parents or want to “do something” in this life.
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Talking to reporters, Sartori recalls the work of Dr. Melvin Morse, who worked in the pediatric intensive care unit, who conducted an interesting study in the 1980s. He studied the behavior of 30 surviving adult patients and found that all of them were mentally resilient, had empathy for others, were successful learners, and none of them became addicted to alcohol or drugs.
The clinical death researcher cited some more interesting facts. It turns out that these children had lower blood pressure, showed increased sensitivity to light and sound, and considered themselves spiritual.
True, their concept of spirituality was different from the religion in which they were brought up. For example, there are cases when church officials complained about children's questions that undermine faith, to which the priests could not answer.