Psychological and Physical Assessment
of Volunteers and Participants
Not all volunteers are likely to be selected for
assessment, due to numbers, location, or other factors.
However, because of the potential dangers, all
eligible volunteers will undergo a thorough physical and psychological
assessment prior to being accepted as participants.
Psychological
The psychological assessment of volunteers
for the Near Death Experiment will be a key aspect of the overall
research. The team will be not only assessing individual volunteers
for their suitability to participate, but also conducting research
into the type of people who volunteer.
While the actual measures to be utilized
have not been finalized, psychological assessment will be highly
detailed and wide ranging and include areas, such as personality,
beliefs and intelligence.
It should be noted that psychological conditions,
such as depression, or anxiety are not going to automatically
preclude people from participating.
Physical
The psychological assessment will take
place prior to the physical assessment and only those persons
who have been deemed as psychologically suitable and selected
as potential participants will undergo the physical assessment.
As with the psychological assessment, the
physical assessment will be highly detailed and will be directed
toward excluding those persons who may have an underlying condition
that would unduly increase their risk of injury of death from
participation in the experiment.
Post Experimental Assessment
Once the experiment has been conducted,
all participants will undergo immediate physical assessment, in
order to ensure that nothing medically untoward has occurred as
a result of their participation.
Furthermore, all participants will undergo
ongoing psychological assessment. One of the major reasons for
running the NDExp is to assess psychological changes arising from
any Near Death Experience, or from having "died" even
if an NDE isn't reported. Because of this it is anticipated that
all participants will undergo ongoing psychological assessment
for a number of years after the experiment. Initially, this would
occur fairly often, but with decreasing frequency over time.
