Nurse Erica McKenzie has seen many patients who have experienced clinical death, and she herself has had deep experiences of near-death experiences.
McKenzie, 31, spent months in a mental hospital after telling her doctor about her experiences. Despite never suffering from psychiatric illness, she was separated from her children and forced to take large doses of drugs.
As a result, she had to lie in order to have her dose of medication reduced and, in the end, released.
When the medical staff asked her, “How are you feeling today? Have you been to heaven?”She replied that she was not, although she clearly remembered the visions at the time of clinical death.
Medical professionals discussed the approach to near-death experiences in a panel discussion by the International Association for the Study of Near-Death (IANDs) August 28-31, 2014. Although there are people suffering from hallucinations who need some treatment to get back to normal, the case of near-death experiences is not necessarily hallucination.
Near-death experiences are very common among people who were on the verge of death. Reports of communication with angels or deceased people should not be immediately classified as hallucinations, health officials have concluded.
Panelist Lee Whitting, an NDE Radio presenter and hospital chaplain, said: “You will not scoff at a Catholic, Protestant, Jew or Muslim for their religious beliefs. So why can you behave this way towards people who have had personal mystical experiences?"
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The panellists noted that many doctors and medical professionals do not really deny the possibility of near-death experiences. Despite the fact that in many cases the first reaction is to declare that the patient was simply dreaming or suffered from hallucinations, after discussing this topic, doctors change their attitude, and even begin to take interest in such messages from patients.
Dzhulidzhan Naskov said that he encouraged his colleagues in a private conversation to share the cases of near-death experiences they heard about. Many of them were not ready to openly discuss this topic, therefore they reacted positively to this approach.
Psychiatrist J. Timothy Greene said that he gave a neurologist friend a copy of Dr. Eben Alexander's book Proof of Heaven. Alexander has worked as a neurosurgeon for over 25 years, including at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He thought NDEs were brain-generated fantasies until he experienced it himself. After reading Alexander's book, the doctor became more open, at least she started talking with patients describing their experiences.
This physician enthusiastically told Green about a near-death experience she had heard. A patient in her 60s saw her dead father standing in front of a bright light. She really wanted to go to the light, but her father said that it was not time yet. She tried to run around her father, as she did when she was a little girl, but he caught her in his arms and said that she could not walk towards the light yet.
Many older people who saw something during clinical death are labeled as “insanity,” says psychologist Liz Dale. She works with patients at the San Francisco General Hospital and nursing homes. When she encounters people with such experiences, she crosses out the diagnosis of insanity if the patient has no other symptoms other than the near-death experience.
"I believe that it is unfair to diagnose cognitive impairment to anyone who has had spiritual experiences after coming out of anesthesia or has had a near-death experience." I'm against that,”says Dale.
Ian Holden of the University of North Texas, in a recent study that has just been accepted for publication in the journal of the American Psychological Association, analyzed how NDEs are perceived by healthcare professionals.
She looked at 188 cases in which patients who had a near-death experience shared it with healthcare providers. Most - 4 out of 5, received positive or neutral answers. One in five faced a negative reaction, often when patients told about it right away. The most positive response was when patients waited for the right occasion and the right atmosphere.
Christa Gorman, a physician assistant who experienced clinical death herself, waited over a decade to speak up: “I was afraid to share those experiences,” she says.
When she told her boss, the head physician of the hospital where she works, that she was going to attend the conference to talk about her near-death experience, he supported her. He said, "I believe in these things," Gorman recalls with a laugh.
After sharing her experiences with colleagues, she faced mixed reactions. “I try to focus my attention on positive reviews,” she says.
A listener from the audience, who works as a psychiatrist in Vancouver, Canada, suggested that you should not go to extremes and be negative about doctors who are reluctant or skeptical about NDE reports. “We shouldn't split into two opposing camps,” she said. "We are all learning together." She said that after talking to healthcare professionals in Vancouver about the topic, many of them have become more serious about it and are more likely to listen to patients who have experienced near-death experiences.