Near-death Experiencers’ Experiences of Disclosing their NDEs to Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

The presenters developed the Near-Death Experiencers’ Experiences of Disclosure Scale (NEEDS) to assess the extent to which a near-death experiencer (NDEr) who had disclosed the NDE to a confidante perceived the confidante to have recognized the NDE as an NDE, considered it at least potentially real, and avoided pathologizing or demonizing the NDE or NDEr. The NEEDS proved reliable and valid. We used the NEEDS to examined 88 NDErs’ perceptions of 188 of their most noteworthy experiences disclosing their NDEs to professional healthcare providers—medical, mental, social, and spiritual/religious.
In this presentation, we report the results of this study, including percentage of disclosure experiences that participants perceived as having been negative, emotionally painful, and harmful and extent to which those results varied by healthcare professional category, year of NDE, immediacy or delay of disclosure, and depth of NDE. We will discuss implications of our findings for education of healthcare providers about NDEs and other STEs as well as ways the NEEDS can be used in further research on disclosure of NDEs and other STEs and on education interventions with healthcare providers.

Presenter Bios

Jan Holden, Ed.D., LPC-S, LMFT, NCC, ACMHP

Janice Miner Holden earned her Bachelor of Science degree in psychology with honors from the University of Illinois at Champaign (1972), and her master of science (1978) and doctoral (1988) degrees in Counselor Education from Northern Illinois University. In 1988, she joined the Counseling Program faculty at the University of North Texas (UNT) where she now is a professor and serves as Chair of the Department of Counseling and Higher Education. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor – Supervisor, Texas Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, National Certified Counselor, and ACISTE Certified Mental Health Professional. At UNT, Jan teaches courses in counseling theory, the transpersonal perspective in counseling, and dreamwork in counseling. Having focused her scholarship on near-death experiences, Jan is past president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, was first editor of The Handbook of Near-Death Experiences: Thirty Year of Investigation (2009, Praeger), and is editor of the quarterly peer reviewed Journal of Near-Death Studies. The nature of human consciousness, particularly at death, and its implications for counseling and for meaning and purpose in life and death, continue to be Jan’s primary research interests.

Lee Kinsey, M.S., LPC

Lee Kinsey, M.S., LPC, is a doctoral candidate in the Counseling Program at the University of North Texas. He has both taken and served as Teaching Assistant in the University of North Texas Counseling Program graduate course, Transpersonal Perspective in Counseling. He has co-authored and both presented and co-presented on spiritual and transpersonal issues in counseling. He is in private practice in Dallas, TX, where he specializes in his primary clinical and research interests: sexual identity development, gay issues in counseling, and sex therapy.