Death Anxiety

Death Anxiety in Elderly Communities (Retirement-Nursing Homes): Participant Observations, Interviews, and Analysis

by Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology

By Tiffany Lindsey, published in Field Notes: A Journal of Collegiate Anthropology 2(1), 2010, pp. 50-68.

Fascinating are projects that explore microcosms in society which remain for individuals largely unknown and hidden... more Fascinating are projects that explore microcosms in society which remain for individuals largely unknown and hidden until changing personal circumstances render those microcosms visible. The circumstances with which this paper is concerned are advanced age and declining health; the microcosm is that of a Metropolitan Milwaukee retirement-nursing home. The purpose of this paper is to investigate via interviews conducted with staff and residents of and participant observations made at this retirement-nursing home the levels of death anxiety felt by members of the latter group. With consideration of subjects’ emotions regarding their surroundings, I concluded that (a) elderly individuals living in the facility experienced greater death anxiety than those residing in personal residences and that (b) there existed within the confines of the retirement-nursing home opportunities for staff members to make environmental improvements so as to limit individual experiences with death anxiety.

Death and Deities: A Social Cognitive Perspective

by Jonathan Jong

in press at Inquisitive Mind (e-mail to request for draft)

The universality of religious belief—in supernatural agents: gods, ghosts, souls, spirits, and their ilk—is, no doubt,... more The universality of religious belief—in supernatural agents: gods, ghosts, souls, spirits, and their ilk—is, no doubt, the product of a whole host of interacting causal factors. However, the notion that such beliefs are driven by fear of death recurs throughout intellectual history. Recent social psychological research provides some support for this claim; however, the relationship between mortality-related concerns and religious belief becomes clearer in light of dual-process models of cognition. Religion, it turns out, might well be such a powerful buffer of existential anxiety because it offers symbolic immortality at an explicit level while also offering literal immortality an at implicit level.

Fear of death and supernatural beliefs: Developing a new Supernatural Belief Scale to test the relationship

by Jonathan Jong

submitted for peer review (e-mail to request for draft)

Fear of death features in both historical and contemporary theories of religion, but the relationship between death... more Fear of death features in both historical and contemporary theories of religion, but the relationship between death anxiety and religious belief is still ambiguous, largely due to inappropriate or imprecise measures of belief. The current studies therefore aimed to develop a valid, targeted measure of supernatural religious beliefs, the “Supernatural Belief Scale” (SBS), useable in predominantly secular contexts and adaptable for pluralistic ones, and to use the SBS to examine the relation between death anxiety and supernatural religious belief. Results indicate that the SBS shows high reliability and convergent validity, and that its relation to death anxiety depends on participants’ religious identification: “Religious” participants fear death less the stronger their religious beliefs, while “nonreligious” participants are more inclined toward religious belief the more they fear death. These studies contribute a new measurement tool for research on religious belief and provide a starting point for an experimental integration of discrepant research findings.

Death and mid life: Why an understanding of life-span develpment is essential for the practice of counselling psychology

by Edith Steffen

Published in 2007 in Counselling Psychology Review, 22 (3), 21-26.

Developed as part of work completed for a PGDip in Counselling Psychology at Roehampton University.

Won the Trainee Prize (Joint Runner-up) of the British Psychological Society's Division of Counselling Psychology.

The clients that come to Counselling Psychology do not live in a vacuum. They are located in time and space and are... more The clients that come to Counselling Psychology do not live in a vacuum. They are located in time and space and are faced with the particular challenges presented by their contexts and their interactions with these contexts. This essay tries to show that an awareness of life-span development is essential for Counselling Psychologists in order to contextualize their clients’ experiences and use this understanding as a resource for therapeutic work. It argues in particular that the existential theme of finitude needs to be considered as impacting on life-span development. It starts by introducing the life-span perspective and its implications for practice and goes on to exemplify this view by focusing on the subject of death – particularly on death awareness and death anxiety – and its influence on people’s lives, especially during what has been called ‘the mid-life crisis’, before applying some of the ideas to the fictional character of Ivanov from Chekhov’s eponymous play. It tries to show that death assumes special significance in mid life and that this is not merely a challenge in Counselling Psychology practice but also an opportunity for growth.

Death as Transformation

by Rebecca Broadbent

MA Philosophy Dissertation

Psychometric Properties of the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) Among Terminally Ill Cancer Patients

by Kenneth Royal

Royal, K. D., & Elahi, F. (2011). Psychometric Properties of the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) Among Terminally Ill Cancer Patients. Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 29(4), 359-371.

Research conducted with the terminally ill population in relation to death anxiety is rare and mostly outdated. The... more Research conducted with the terminally ill population in relation to death anxiety is rare and mostly outdated. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the widely used Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) on a sample of terminal cancer patients. Additionally, validation studies of the DAS have exclusively used traditional statistical methods for analysis. The current study utilized an item response theory technique (IRT), namely the Rasch Rating Scale model for data analysis. The methodology employed may be useful for other researchers conducting validation studies from an IRT perspective.

"Searching For Eternity : A Scientist's Spiritual Journey to Overcome Death Anxiety" by Don Morse (Review)

by Titus Rivas

This is an English translation of a Dutch review published in Terugkeer.

" From Inner to Outer Shadow": Reading the Obscure Object of Anxiety in the" Dramaticules" of Samuel Beckett

by Arka Chattopadhyay