Death Of Self Research Articles

THE COLLETT-LESTER FEAR OF DEATH SCALE: A CORRECTION

A revision of the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale is presented, eliminating a deviant item that reduced the reliability of the scale. Using a sample of 191 undergraduates, four 7-item subscales were derived with adequate reliabilities and factorial congruence for 2 ofthe subscales (Fear of Death of Self and Fear of Dying of Self).

Fear of Death in Widows: Effects of Age at Widowhood and Suddenness of Death

This study investigated how widows' fears of death are affected by their age at widowhood and suddenness of death. Researchers administered the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale to 423 participants, categorized according to age (50 and 51) and suddenness of death (expected, unexpected, and non-widowed). No significant differences in fears of the dying process were found among groups. Fears of death of others and death of self were influenced by a significant effect of age: younger women expressed greater fears than older women. A significant interaction between age and suddenness of death was found regarding fear of death of others. Results are discussed and implications for research and practice are suggested.

Influência do contexto na percepção e nas representações sociais da morte

O estudo apresentado neste artigo integra-se numa investigação em que se pretende analisar e compreender as concepções que subjazem à construção psicossocial da morte, entre futuros profissionais de saúde que com ela irão lidar num contexto social público. Partimos do facto de que, nos nossos dias, a morte raramente acontece num contexto social privado – o que parece assumir contornos dramáticos. Neste estudo experimental investiga-se o efeito do contexto em que se observa a morte de uma pessoa (contexto privado ou familiar e contexto público ou hospitalar) no modo como a morte é representada numa população de estudantes de ambos os sexos e de três cursos universitários (biologia, enfermagem e medicina).

‘Just live for today’. Living, caring, ageing and dying

There is an assumption in western societies that death in old age is not only ‘natural’ but also ‘easy’. It is often characterised as death which occurs at the end of life with goals complete. By contrast death in youth is a traumatic and untimely end. This paper draws on interviews with people over the age of 75 to explore the nature of attitudes to death in old age. It focuses on the issues raised by elderly people themselves when given the opportunity to talk about death and dying. In so doing, attitudes to death and dying are separated into ‘death of self’ and ‘death of other’. Each of these categories is then divided thematically according to the issues raised by respondents.

Father Dead, Mother Dead: Bereavement and Fictive Death in Penan Geng Society

A characteristic of the mortuary complexes of central Bornean societies is the existence of systems of “death-names.” Death-names are actually titles, given to persons on the death of a relative. This article examines the system employed by Penan Geng hunter-gatherers. What is significant about the Penan complex is that death-names are employed in a wider range of contexts than that of bereavement: they are used 1) to express affection, 2) to verify statements, and 3) as curses. Each of these usages derives from the assumption that reference to the death of a living individual may bring it about. Much recent scholarship on death has been predicated on the assumption that humans deny death. The Penan case would seem to counter this. Penan have incorporated the theme of death into all forms of social discourse. Rather than denying death, this discursive complex uses reference to the death of self or others to social ends.

Some interpersonal and attitudinal factors characterizing patients satisfied with medical care.

This research investigated the extent to which interpersonal and attitudinal factors affect the doctor-patient relationship. A questionnaire survey of people living in northeastern Kansas who had experience with medical care was conducted. Dependent measures were over-all patient satisfaction, patient's attitude toward death of self or others, causality orientation, attitude toward health and disease, and perception of the doctor-patient relationship. The majority of test subjects (92%) reported satisfaction with their medical care. A significant correlation between fear of death of significant others and scores on causality scales reflects feelings of not being in control of one's life. Other associations indicate that people who do not feel in control of their lives depend on traditional and folk remedies. Scores showing low fear of own death correlated significantly with the rated greater sense of responsibility for own health and treatment. Patients who rated themselves as more needy were unsatisfied with their care and those whose doctors called them by first name tended to be more content. Even in populations satisfied with their medical care, we suggest that the quality of care could be improved by attention to interpersonal and attitudinal factors.

Will a course on death and dying lower students' death and dying anxiety?

This course describes a 7-week, one-and-one-half-hour per week course on Death and Dying and examines its impact on medical students' attitudes. The 30 participants were tested on attitudes about death and dying pre- and post-course. The pre- and post-course fears about death and dying were measured with the 32-item Collett-Lester Death Anxiety Scale, which measures fear of death and the dying process as these apply to self and others. The Semantic Differential technique was used to measure the pre- and post-course attitudes toward "treating the dying patient" and "dealing with the dying patient's family." There was a decrease in anxiety about death and dying when the posttest was compared with the pretest on the anxiety scales, with death of self and death of others reaching significance (p = .04 and .04). There was a decrease in anxiety scores on the Semantic Differential on treating the dying patient and dealing with the dying patient's family (p = less than .001 for both).

Signing an organ donor card: psychological factors.

Personality factors related to organ donor card signing were explored in a sample of 94 students. Nondonors scored higher on Templer's Death Anxiety Scale, Collett-Lester Fear of Death of Self, Death of Others, and Dying of Self subscales, and a scale of physical anxiety. Donors scored higher on a Likert scale reflecting acceptance of dying and, not surprisingly, on self-efficacy to sign an organ donor card. When regrouped on the basis of whether they believed in donation, those nondonors who believed they should donate were intermediate in self-efficacy between donors and those who had no interest in donating. This nondonor/believer group may be most likely to donate but may be restrained by the anxiety factors noted above. Further efforts should focus on clarifying these issues, so as to increase donation of greatly needed organs.

Teachers' death anxiety, ability to cope with death, and perceived ability to aid bereaved students

Abstract The focus of this study is the relationship between educators' personal death attitudes and the emotional support they are able to give students experiencing serious loss. After a discussion of evidence illustrating how teachers' death attitudes influence their ability to aid grieving students; the need for teachers to be aware of both those attitudes, and the needs of students suffering from the effects of loss are identified. Results are then presented of a study that assessed the correlation between teachers' death attitudes and experience and their perceived ability to aid grieving students. Teachers' ability to handle death of self, their level of death anxiety, their perception of their role with students who have experienced loss, and their ability to feel comfortable in counseling grieving students were among the factors found to predict their perceived ability to help grieving students. The implications of the research findings are reviewed, and the need for further research explored.

Gender and sex-role stereotypes in scales of death concern

Abstract A review of the literature reveals that gender is one of the variables most consistently related to death anxiety. Consistent with these findings, females in the present study reported significantly more death anxiety on Templer's Death Anxiety Scale than did males. In addition, females expressed greater Fear of Death of Others and Fear of Dying of Self on the Collett-Lester Scale. Given intercorrelations, multiple regression analyses were conducted that revealed that, over and above the control variables of Trait Anxiety, State Anxiety, and Social Desirability, gender made a significant contribution to prediction for four of five death concern scales. In the case of Templer's Scale, Fear of Death of Self and Fear of Dying of Self, the addition of Bem's scales to the equation improved prediction. For these three scales Femininity was a significant individual predictor in the final equation while gender was not. These findings suggest that when subjects contemplate their own deaths sex-role stereotypes can help account for gender differences, with more “feminine” individuals reporting more death concern.

Fear of death and religious belief.

While some researchers have reported that religious beliefs are associated with less fear of death (Swenson, 1961), others have reported no association (Kalish, 1963). To explore this, the revised Collett-Lester fear of deatwdying scale (Lester, 1988) was given to 18 men and 18 women enrolled in college courses (M age = 22.7 yr., SD = 4.3). The mean scores were 21.4 (SD = 8.1) for fear of death of self, 29.7 (6.3) for dying of self, 27.2 (6.0) for death of others, and 30.1 (5.4) for dying of others. Scores on the four fear of death subscales were not related to belief in God, an afterlife, or that the subject would go to heaven, to church attendance, or whether the subject considered himself to be a religious person. Fear of one's own death was related to a fear of hell (Pearson r = 0.36, p<.02) even after controlling for age and sex by using partial correlation coefficients. The present analysis then gives no evidence for a strong association between fears of death and religious belief.

Adolescent fears: Some Caribbean findings

A total of 657 adolescents (12-15 years) in Barbados provided responses to the question, "Is there anything you are really scared or afraid of?" Most frequently named fears were of three main types: fear of injury or death of self or loved ones, sexual concerns, and fears associated with school failure. However, certain other fears usually reported as relatively infrequent among adolescents in industrialized countries, such as fear of the dark, fear of walking lonely roads, and fear of animals, were also prominent, and reflect local geographical and cultural conditions. The influence of the media was also evident: many students were concerned about nuclear war, or held somewhat exaggerated fear of certain threats to personal safety (for example, being killed) given actual local incidence levels. From a guidance and counseling perspective, the data particularly highlight the need for improved sex and family life education.

An educational-therapeutic group for drug and alcohol abusing combat veterans

Vietnam veterans have had a high incidence of substance abuse, resulting from attempts to control posttraumatic symptoms. Their recovery from drug and alcohol dependency has meant involvement in treatment for resolution of posttraumatic symptoms. The author found that the addition of a short-term educational-therapeutic group experience, focusing on the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, was helpful for the participants. They “worked-through” important war-related experiences via the following phases: (1) Breaking through detachment and establishing control over disruptive symptoms, (2) Revealing experiences of death and dehumanization (3) Describing the internal “death of self” experience, and (4) Beginning the grief response.

Level of Belief in Afterlife and Four Categories of Fear of Death in a Sample of 60+-Year-Olds

Studies investigating a correlation between fear of death and belief in afterlife have reported equivocal results (Martin & Wrightsman, 1964; Lester, 1967). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between a non-religious belief in afterlife measure and four categories of fear of death in a sample of 60+ year olds. Subjects were contacted through senior centers, social service agencies, and private contact. The sample included 30 females and 10 males, ranging in age from 60 to 82 yr. (M.,. = 67.5) and coming from a middle to upp-r socioeconomic level. Subjects completed the Belief in Afterlife Scale (Osarchuk & Tatz, 1973) and the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (Collett & Lester, 1969), which consists of four subscales: Fear of Death of Self, Fear of Death of Others, Fear of Dying of Self, and Fear of Dying of Others. Product-moment correlations were computed between scores on the Belief in Afterlife Scale and each of the four subscales of the Collect-Lester Fear of Death Scale. No significant correlation was found between level of belief in afterlife and Fear of Death of Self (r = -.08), Fear of Dying of Self (r = .15), or Fear of Dying of Others (r = .05). A significant positive correlation was found between level of belief in afterlife and Fear of Death of Others (r = .44, p < .01). The Fear of Death of Others, of all of the four subscales of the Collett-Lester scale, represents the most concrete manifestation of death. An individual cannot actually experience his or her own death but can experience the loss of another. The older mcmbers of our society, the group sampled here, experience proportionately more deaths of others than do younger age groups. To interpret from the results of this study that the more an individual fears the loss of others the more likely that person is to formulate a higher level of belief in life after death would lend support to Feifel's (1959) belief thar many individuals who strongly fear death may resort to religious values to cope with this fear. This interpretation could gain support from the study by Osarchuk and Tatz (1973), in which viewing a movie apparently affected one group of subjects such that they elevated their reported Belief in Afterlife Scale scores significantly. The death of another (especially a significant other) can be considered as a personal death-threat to an individual. Replications using larger samples and diverse age groups would help clarify these results.

Attitudes of Nursing Students and Nursing Faculty toward Death

An investigation of the attitudes of 128 undergraduates, 66 graduate nursing students, and 62 nursing faculty at a university school of nursing in New York State toward death and dying was completed using the questionnaire, “Attitudes toward Death and Dying.” The subscale scores of fear of death of self, fear of death of others, fear of dying of self, fear of dying of others, general fear of death, and the consistency of attitudes toward death were compared according to levels of education and areas of clinical specialization. The results indicated that fears of death and dying decreased with increased education, but differences based on area of clinical specialization were not statistically significant.

Studies in death attitudes. 2.

The present note reports the results of three studies on death attitudes. (1) Lester (1967) reported that Ss with more inconsistent attitudes toward death had a higher fear of death than Ss with less inconsistent attitudes toward death. Seventeen tests of this conclusion were made with the data from 10 samples of Ss. Of the 17 correlation coefficients, 2 were significant in the predicted direction; the remaining 15 were not significant; 11 of the coefficients were positive and 6 were negative (binomial p = 0.17). It may be concluded that the association reported by Lester (1967) is a valid result but that the association is quite weak. (2) It has been reported that males have less fear of death than females on general measures of the fear of death. The present study examined sex differences in death anxiety using measures of specific fears. Forty-six Ss in a psychology course were given the Collett-Lester fear of death scale (Collett & Lester, 1967) and rated the concept of death on the semantic differential scales. The age range of Ss was 17 to 50 yr., with a median of 2295 yr. Age was not correlated with fears of death. Females had a significantly greater feat of death of self, death of others, and dying of self than did males but did not differ in fear of dying of others, general fear of deach, inconsistency in death attitudes, and semantic differential ratings of the concept of death. These data suggest that the greater fear of death of females may not be general but rather found only in specific areas of concern. (3) An examination was made of the utility of semantic differential ratings of the concept of death as a measure of death attitudes. It was found that the evaluative ratings of the concept of death were significantly related to measures of the fear of death. Activity and potency ratings were not so related. The semantic distance between the ratings of the concepts of life and of death was not related to measures of death anxiety from standard scales. These data suggest that the evaluative measures from semantic differential ratings of the concept of death may tap the fear of death of Ss. Other measures (activity and potency ratiags and the semantic distance measure) are not associated with the measures of the fear of death. Thus, they may be tapping a very different dimension of death amtudes. What this dimension may be cannot be answered until validity studies are performed.

Fear of death of those in a high stress occupation.

Feifel, et a1. (2) found that physicians had a higher fear of death than control Ss and suggested that fear of death may have played a role in the choice of profession by the physicians. They may have chosen to be doctors in order to gain mastery over their fear of death. A similar argument could be advanced for those who choose to be policemen, an occupation where preoccupation with danger and death is common (4, p. 42). The present study sought to examine the fear of death in policemen. Ss were 17 male patrolmen from one Buffalo precinct and 15 mail carriers from a postal station in the same area. Ss did not differ in religious denomination or age (age range 23 to 54 yr., median age of police was 34, of mailmen 42). Ss were volunteers and anonymously filled out a questionnaire which included rwo fear of death scales (1, 3) and the semantic differential (utilizing five concepts to be rated on evaluative, potency, and activity scales, including the concepts of life and death). The nvo groups did not differ in their fear for death of self (xa = 0.5, df = 1 on a median test), death of others (x2 = 0.0), dying of self (x' = 0.0), dying of others (x2 = 0.0), general fear of death (x2 = 0.0), and inconsistency in their attitudes toward death (x= = 0.0). The nvo groups did not differ in their ratings of the concepts of life and death on any of the three semantic differential measures (the largest t = 0.86, df = 30). The groups differed on one dimension. A total of 23 patrolmen were approached and six refused to take the test whereas a total of 37 mail carriers were approached and 22 refused to take the test (X3 = 5.08, df = 1, p < 0.02). It was noted that the patrolmen were more friendly and less defensive than the mail carriers. The latter were tested prior to impending changes in the postal system, a factor which could have affected their attitudes toward testing. However, when the patrolmen were compared with 23 male students' enrolled in introductory psychology, they did not differ significantly on any of the six fear of death measures (the largest X' = 0.5, df = 1). Thus, it appears that patrolmen do not differ significantly from control groups in their fear of death. Their cooperation in taking the test perhaps suggests less defensiveness about death and suggests that by being patrolmen they may have worked through their death anxiery in part and, at a conscious verbal level, resemble other adult males.

Selflessness in the Pattern of Salvation

The ‘death of self’ appears to be an essential feature of the redemptive goal on which several religious quests converge. It would seem, therefore, that here lies a convenient pragmatic criterion to determine the efficacy of the various religions in achieving their desired ends, and one which would be valid in several religious traditions, thereby overcoming the impasse of particularity in inter-faith discussion.