Sources

Research & Sources

This page exists so that nothing on this site has to be taken on trust. Where we have a verified reference, it is here with a link you can follow.

Where we do not, the entry says so in the same conspicuous way wherever the claim appears. We would rather show you a gap than fill it with a source we have not checked.

Verified references

Citations pending

Systematic reviews

Reviews that pool findings across multiple studies. The strongest available summary of what has been observed.

2026

The impact of after-death communications on grief and meaning-making among the bereaved: A qualitative systematic review

Sweeney, S., Ryan, P., Leahy, D., & Deering, H. · Death Studies

A thematic synthesis of 14 qualitative studies covering 1,971 bereaved participants. It found that after-death communications, including mediumship readings, are frequently experienced as relationally meaningful and can support a continuing bond with the person who died. It also found the effect to be dual-edged: a minority of participants described distress or disillusionment following inaccurate or emotionally incongruent readings.

Why it matters to a referrer

This is the source behind the figure quoted on the home page. Its dual-edged finding is the empirical basis for this entire resource. The same encounter can help or harm, and what separates the two is the quality of the practice, which is observable.

doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2026.2626550

Clinical and bereavement literature

Work on grief, continuing bonds and how bereaved people use mediumship, drawn from clinical and counseling literature.

1996

Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief

Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., & Nickman, S. L. (Eds.) · Routledge (Death Education, Aging and Health Care series). ISBN 9781560323396

The anthology that displaced the detachment model of grief. Drawing on studies across several bereaved populations, it argued that maintaining a bond with the person who died is a normal and often adaptive part of mourning rather than a failure to let go.

Why it matters to a referrer

Sets the clinical frame a referring professional needs. A client seeking contact with someone who died is usually expressing an ordinary continuing bond, not pathology. The useful question is therefore not whether they should be doing this, but whether the practitioner they have found works safely.

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Controlled research

Studies testing mediumship claims under controlled conditions, including blinding and independent scoring.

2015

Anomalous information reception by research mediums under blinded conditions II: Replication and extension

Beischel, J., Boccuzzi, M., Biuso, M., & Rock, A. J. · EXPLORE: The Journal of Science & Healing, 11(2), 136–142

Twenty certified research mediums completed 86 readings under a multi-level blinding protocol designed to remove cold reading, rater bias, experimenter cueing and fraud as explanations. Mediums were blinded to the sitter and the deceased, raters were blinded to the origin of the readings they scored, and experimenters were blinded to information that could leak.

Why it matters to a referrer

Useful less for its result than for its method. It shows what it actually takes to test a reading under controlled conditions, and by contrast how little an impressive session in a private room establishes. Note that the authors are affiliated with an organisation that certifies mediums, so weigh the interpretation accordingly.

doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2015.01.001

Ethics, regulation and practice standards

Standards, regulation and ethical analysis relevant to practitioners working with bereaved people.

2019

A Scoping Review of Ethical Considerations in Spiritual/Religious Counseling and Psychotherapy

Maximo, S. I. · Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling

A scoping review of the ethical literature on spiritual and religious work in counselling and psychotherapy. Four themes recur: the client's right to autonomy and self-determination, cultural sensitivity, practitioner competence, and staying inside one's professional role rather than assuming a clergy or spiritual-guidance function.

Why it matters to a referrer

Underpins the Autonomy and Respect & Ethics dimensions. The boundary it draws, that a practitioner must not drift into roles they are neither trained for nor accountable in, is precisely what R asks you to watch for in a session.

doi.org/10.1177/1542305019848656

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If you know of research that belongs here, or you think we have represented something inaccurately, tell us. Corrections are more useful to us than agreement.

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