Children

Melvin Morse, MD – Study of Near-Death Experiences of Children

Melvin Morse, MD adds to The Lancet study by focusing specifically on children, and compares an NDE study group with a large non-NDE control group. Studying children’s experiences has four major advantages:

(1) the vast majority of children have never heard or even had the occasion to hear about near-death experiences (therefore, their accounts cannot be biased by others’ reports),

(2) children generally are not motivated by personal, cultural, or religious agendas (and therefore they are unlikely to report data to help these agendas),

(3) children are reticent to report near-death experiences (even to their parents) because the experiences are so extraordinary and the children feel the need to “belong” and avoid ridicule, and

(4) the NDE has transformative effects on the children long after their occurrence.

Morse compared his study group of 12 children spanning ten years (who were resuscitated from cardiac arrest or who had returned from deep comas) with a control group of 121 children who were severely ill but not resuscitated or in deep coma, and an additional control group of 37 children who had received large doses of mind-altering drugs but were also not resuscitated or in deep coma.

None of the 121 children in the control group experienced anything like a near-death experience. In the study group, 8 out of 12 did experience some of the above ten characteristics of NDEs (70%). This variance is so vast that it cannot be explained by coincidence or statistical aberration. Furthermore, the control group who had received mind-altering drugs did not report anything like an NDE. Morse drew two conclusions from this which he presented in two peer-reviewed journal articles (by the American Medical Association^[18]):

(1) It is not unusual for children who have been resuscitated during cardiac arrest or have recovered from a deep coma to have some of the characteristics of near-death experiences, and

(2) These experiences were not produced by narcotics, mind-altering drugs, oxygen-deprivation states, or stressed psychological states (and thus, they are not attributable to hallucinations).

Morse also completed another study of the transformation of children and adults by near-death experiences,^[19] which is corroborated by van Lommel et al^[20] and Raymond Moody.^[21] He placed particular emphasis on a characteristic which could be measured with a fairly high degree of objectivity – the fear of death. In order to accomplish this, he assembled a group of several psychiatrists, psychologists, and neuro-psychiatrists (as well as student interns and volunteers) to study the transformative effects of near-death experiences in almost 500 patients.^[22] He used two methods to measure death-anxiety in both the study group and the general population, and concluded as follows:

We discovered that adults who have had near-death experiences as children have a much lower fear of death than people who have not had them. This was true whether they had vivid and wonderful memories of a flower-filled heaven or a brief and fleeting experience of light. Furthermore, the deeper their experience, the less they were afraid of death. This finding is in sharp contrast to people who have come close to death and survived, but were not fortunate enough to have had a near-death experience. They actually had a slightly higher death anxiety than normal. And…people who identify themselves as being intensely spiritual, have the same death anxiety as the general population.

This is a significant discovery because it does not seem that we can control our anxiety about death by religious faith alone. It seems that we need something transcendent to come to us – something beautiful, profound, and assuring. This “something” is capable not only of alleviating fear, but also of positively transforming one’s entire outlook and life. Thus, the long-term effects of NDEs can be measured with a fairly high degree of objectivity – and they stand in stark contrast to the general population.^[23]