Abstract
Thanatophobia is omnipresent in our lives. Research has shown separate but connected constructs: fear of death or fear of the dying process. The influences on death anxiety are varied including religiosity, gender, psychological state, and age. It is often assumed by the children of the elderly that the fear of death is prevalent in their parents. Daily the medical staff encounters the presence of death anxiety: from family members or the staff itself. In order to understand this phenomenon, a three-tier study was conducted on non-terminal elderly inpatients in an acute geriatric care ward. The study showed that the elderly had low levels of anxiety (scoring 4/15 on Templer’s Death Anxiety Scale) but their children scored higher for themselves (6.9/15) and for their parents (8.9/15). A regression model showed that only the presence of generalized anxiety and religiosity of parent had an effect explaining 33.6% of the variance. Death anxiety of death is usually absent in the elderly but rather they fear the dying process. On the other hand, their children do fear death, which they extrapolate onto their parents. This causes conflicts since the children prevent disclosure of relevant medical information to their parents. This has to be addressed by the staff when dealing with family members, to allow open and honest communication with their patients. The staff need to explain to the family that the elderly are not afraid of death but of the suffering from the dying process.
Highlights
Death anxiety is present in our lives and affects each and every one of us in different ways
This anxiety related to fear of death was termed thanatophobia by Sigmund Freund in 1915 in his seminal essays titled: Thoughts for the Time on War and Death
Death anxiety has been identified to have six different attributes to the concept: emotion related to fear of disappearance, cognitive acceptance of death, experiential that death anxiety is not part of one’s conscious experience, development stage with identity crises affecting the degree of death anxiety, sociocultural shaping such as western societies concealing the sick and elderly accompanied by denial of death and source motivation affecting psychological status of the individual [1]
Summary
Death anxiety is present in our lives and affects each and every one of us in different ways. Whether the problem is fear of death or fear of dying process in both age groups was examined, and was studied whether the middle-aged children of elderly patients were able to assess correctly, by proxy, the level of death anxiety in their own parents. The presence or belief of the presence of death anxiety may affect the ability to communicate with patients about death as they age To understand if this was gender related, an analysis was performed, and it was shown that for both sexes those who agreed to disclose medical problems to their parents compared to non-disclosures, scored lower for their parents on proxy assessment (males 4.7/15 versus 8.4/15 and females 9.6/15 versus 10.1/15).
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