Death anxiety

"Fear of death" redirects here. For the Tim Heidecker album, see Fear of Death. For the Chinese idiom, see Kiasi.
"Fear of dying" redirects here. For the Alison Wonderland song, see Alison Wonderland § Discography. For the Jack Off Jill song, see Clear Hearts Grey Flowers.
"Thanatophobia" redirects here. For other uses, see Thanatophobia (disambiguation).
Death anxiety
Other namesThanatophobia
An illustration from La Fontaine's fable "La Mort et le Mourant" depicting the Grim Reaper
SpecialtyClinical psychology, psychiatry

Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of one's own death, and is also known as thanatophobia (fear of death).[1] Individuals affected by this kind of anxiety experience challenges and adversities in many aspects of their lives.[2] Death anxiety is different from necrophobia, which refers to an irrational or disproportionate fear of dead bodies or of anything associated with death.[3] Death anxiety has been found to affect people of differing demographic groups as well, such as men versus women, young versus old, etc.[4] Different cultures can manifest aspects of death anxiety in differing degrees.[5]

Psychotherapist Robert Langs (1928–2014) proposed three different causes of death anxiety: predatory, predator, and existential. In addition to his research, many theorists such as Sigmund Freud, Erik Erikson, and Ernest Becker have examined death anxiety and its impact on cognitive processing.

Anxiety caused by recent thought-content[6] about death is sometimes classified by a psychiatrist in a clinical setting as morbid or abnormal, or a combination of the two. This classification pre-necessitates a degree of anxiety which is persistent and which interferes with everyday functioning.[7][8] This high level of death anxiety in the elderly can cause lower ego integrity, and an increase in physical and psychological problems.[9]

Researchers have linked death anxiety with several mental-health conditions.[10] Common therapies that have been used to treat several mental-health conditions include psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. Users of these therapies explore the emotional processing and adaptations through patients' psychotherapy experience and how their mind is evolving to the emotionally affected experiences they have had in their life. Psychotherapies and psychoanalysis have been used to explore predatory death anxiety, as well as existential and predator death anxiety.[11]

One meta-analysis of psychological interventions targeting death anxiety showed that cognitive behavioral therapy can reduce death anxiety.[12]

  1. ^ "Definition of thanatophobia". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2021-11-15.
  2. ^ "Thanatophobia (Fear of Death)". my.clevelandclinic.org.
  3. ^ "Definition of necrophobia". Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2021-11-15.
  4. ^ Mani, Arash; Fereidooni, Reza; Salehi-Marzijarani, Mohammad; Ardekani, Ali; Sasannia, Sarvin; Habibi, Pardis; Zarei, Leila; Heydari, Seyed Taghi; Lankarani, Kamran B. (July 2022). "The prevalence and risk factors of death anxiety and fear of COVID-19 in an Iranian community: A cross-sectional study". Health Science Reports. 5 (4): e706. doi:10.1002/hsr2.706. ISSN 2398-8835. PMC 9207499. PMID 35765604.
  5. ^ Gire, James T. (10 July 2019). "Cultural Variations in Perceptions of Aging". In Keith, Kenneth D. (ed.). Cross-Cultural Psychology: Contemporary Themes and Perspectives (2 ed.). Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 232. ISBN 9781119438403. Retrieved 6 April 2024. [...] death anxiety is a multifaceted concept; therefore, differences may exist between cultural groups or ethnicities on different aspects of death anxiety.
  6. ^ Combs, Heidi. "Mental Status Exam" (PDF). University of Washington. Retrieved 2017-06-05.
  7. ^ Gold, Liza H. (June 2014). "DSM-5 and the Assessment of Functioning: The World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0)". Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. 42 (2): 173–181. PMID 24986344. Retrieved 2017-06-05.
  8. ^ "Anxiety Disorders". Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Association. May 2013. doi:10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596.dsm05. ISBN 9780890425558.
  9. ^ V. Fortner, Robert A. Neimeyer, Barry (June 1999). "Death Anxiety in Older Adults: A Quantitative Review". Death Studies. 23 (5): 387–411. doi:10.1080/074811899200920. ISSN 0748-1187. PMID 10558505.
  10. ^ Iverach, Lisa; Menzies, Ross G.; Menzies, Rachel E. (2014). "Death anxiety and its role in psychopathology: Reviewing the status of a transdiagnostic construct". Clinical Psychology Review. 34 (7): 580–593. doi:10.1016/j.cpr.2014.09.002. ISSN 0272-7358. PMID 25306232.
  11. ^ "APA PsycNet". Death anxiety, a critical influence on human life and its psychotherapies, has been relatively neglected by psychoanalytic writers. [...] Three forms of death anxiety are postulated: existential, predatory, and predator. The author explores the effects of each form on emotional adaptations and the psychotherapy experience, and their role in the evolution of the emotion-processing mind-the postulated mental module with which people adapt to emotionally charged events and their meanings.
  12. ^ Menzies, Rachel E.; Zuccala, Matteo; Sharpe, Louise; Dar-Nimrod, Ilan (2018). "The effects of psychosocial interventions on death anxiety: A meta-analysis and systematic review of randomised controlled trials". Journal of Anxiety Disorders. 59: 64–73. doi:10.1016/j.janxdis.2018.09.004. ISSN 0887-6185. PMID 30308474. S2CID 52965504.