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Editor's Foreword In 2003, University of Virginia psychiatrist Bruce Greyson published a classic article in which he reported results of a study of the preva- lence of near-death experiences (NDEs) in a psychiatric outpatient clinic population. He found that 7% of his sample of 832 patients re- ported NDEs, and although on all 12 indices of psychological distress that he measured, the 272 (33%) of his sample who reportedly had survived a close brush with death manifested significantly greater distress than those who reportedly had not, those who had had NDEs during their close brush reported lower-and in four of the indices, significantly lower-psychological distress than those who had not. Since that time, little more has been published on NDEs in psychiat- ric populations-until now. This issue opens with a report by Cana- dian psychiatrist Tony Benning and US mental health professional, academic, and ACISTE certified spiritual guidance counselor Ryan Rominger who report on five cases from Benning's psychiatric out- patient practice in which patients reported NDEs and other paranor- mal death-related phenomena. These authors' qualitative treatment of their topic-in which they addressed issues such as factors in patients' disclosure of their experiences and the clinical results that patients reported and that Benning observed following their disclosures adds to Greyson's classic quantitative data the richness of the lived experience of clinical interactions involving anomalous death-related phenomena. Next, two book reviews are interestingly juxtaposed, in that the authors of the first book argued for a physical explanation of NDEs, whereas those of the second book presented over 100 cases of paranor- mal phenomena related to NDEs and verified by a third party that, they argued, defy physical explanation. In the first review, retired en- vironmental engineer Dan Punzak reviews Near-Death Experiences: Understanding Visions of the Afterlife by John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin. Although he acknowledged the possible merit of some of the authors' contentions that NDEs could be explained in purely physical terms, he pointed out several ways in which he be- lieved those contentions fell short of explaining all aspects of NDEs and concluded with a prediction that "within 25 years the nonphysi- Journal of Near-Death Studies, 34(4), Summer 2016 2016 IANDS 193 D OI: 10.1 7514/JNDS-2016-34-4-p193-194.
