NDEs Following ICU-Related Delirium

[Giulia]

Ever since the Covid19 pandemic started, there has been an increasing number of cases of ICU-related delirium. People of all ages, if restrained, sedated and ventilated, in conjunction with the Covid infection and maybe also suffering from other factors which induce delirium, such as other infections, dehydration, and malnutrition and being administered a cocktail of drugs, tend to experience delirium. Delirium involves very real hallucinations: the feeling of being restrained can be translated by the mind into all sorts of hospital-related conspiracies, old issues taught by religions can turn into horrifying experiences and so on. A patient suffering from delirium cannot do much to fight these hallucinations (especially since ICU healthcare staff tend to know very little on the subject) and delirium is often followed by the Post-Intensive-Care Syndrome (PICS), which can include PTSD and a whole range of life-changing disabilities.

Due to covid mortality and to its life-threatening nature, especially in the first stage where the medical community did not know much about the virus and how to treat it, I have come across a number of cases of NDEs following delirium, or even only plain delirium, where delirium was mistaken for part of the NDE or for the NDE itself. A poor woman who lost her husband after his second or third intubation, who had related the horrifying delirium-related visions he had had, came to an NDE group asking if her husband had ended up in hell.

I feel this is a new reality we need to be aware of when somebody comes along and relates a hellish NDE.