The Psychological Correlates of Decreased Death Anxiety After a Near-Death Experience: The Role of Self-Esteem, Mindfulness, and Death Representations

… Near-death experiences (NDE) … we compared 102 people who had an NDE with 104 individuals who did not. Participants completed measures of death anxiety, self-esteem, mindfulness, and death representation. Results indicated that people who had an NDE had lower fear of death, higher self-esteem, greater mindfulness, and viewed death more as a transition rather than as absolute annihilation. Subsequent analyses found that NDE had a direct effect on death anxiety, and that the effect of NDE on death anxiety was also mediated by indirect effects on self-esteem and death representation. …