Death anxiety (thanatophobia)

In psychology, death anxiety (or thanatophobia) can be understood in two different ways. First, and primarily, death anxiety can be described as the fear and worry that arise from an individual's comprehension of their mortality. This fear can become particularly intense because of circumstances that make the individual's death seem imminent.

Alternately, the term can describe a psychological condition marked by intrusive levels of worry and dread, in which a person displays an unusual and persistent preoccupation with their death. This condition most frequently arises during young adulthood and tends to be most pronounced during middle age and in people with underlying mental illnesses and/or mood disorders.

Some psychologists present yet another model, in which death anxiety is a very common, practically universal constant. Proponents of this theory hold that people continuously struggle, consciously or subconsciously, to come to terms with the inevitability of their own death. This, in turn, is thought to have a profound influence on human behavior.

Background

In his 1915 essay "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death," the pioneering Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud claimed that people do not believe in their own death and are convinced of their own immortality. Freud believed that it is not functionally possible for people to be afraid of death itself, since death is something no living person has experienced. For Freud, death anxiety essentially served as a vehicle for masking other, more deeply rooted fears. Freud believed that death anxiety tends to be more closely related to unresolved forms of psychological trauma, particularly those that are rooted in childhood.

Freud's theoretical model served as the foundational understanding of death anxiety until the 1970s, when Ernest Becker published the Pulitzer Prize–winning book The Denial of Death. In the book, Becker forwarded an alternative, existential theory that not only positioned death anxiety as directly related to death itself, but also posited that human fear of death is so ever-present and powerful that it forms the basis of most, if not all, other types of fear. Becker believed it is easier for people to transform their overwhelming fear of death into many smaller, more manageable anxieties. He also theorized that people make constant conscious and subconscious efforts in their daily lives to deny their own mortality to avoid facing it and thus keep their anxiety in check.

Additional perspectives surfaced in the late twentieth century, when psychological research uncovered a trend noting that people with higher levels of self-esteem tended to have lower levels of death anxiety. A related concept known as "regret theory" was subsequently developed. According to the regret theory model, fear of death is more intense in people who do not or cannot lead lives they consider fulfilling. Thus, proponents of the regret theory model believe in an inverse relationship between death anxiety and a sense of individual accomplishment in life.

The "edge theory" of author and professor Robert Kastenbaum also merits mention. Kastenbaum believed that death anxiety serves the important practical purpose of keeping people aware and alert about potential threats to their well-being. For Kastenbaum, death anxiety was an innate psychological self-preservation mechanism, with high levels of anxiety suddenly appearing when a person finds themself on the "edge" of death.

Overview

Death anxiety is widely considered to be a uniquely human experience. While there is a significant body of evidence to suggest that many animals and even plants experience a rush of fear at the moment of their death, humans have cultivated the capability to think about and reflect upon death in a way that is believed to have no known analogue in any other species. Despite a lack of objective understanding about what happens to an individual's consciousness after death, humans throughout history have developed intricate systems of processing and dealing with mortality. For cultural anthropologists, human efforts to find meaning in death reflect a quest to find meaning in life.

Despite the prominence of death and death-related rituals in both historical and contemporary human culture, it has proven difficult for researchers to carry out comprehensive and objective studies of death anxiety. While many of the studies on the topic are considered methodologically flawed, academic inquiry has nevertheless identified several noteworthy general patterns regarding death anxiety.

First, low to moderate levels of death anxiety are extremely common and tend to be fairly constant across cultures, races, and religions. Women appear to be more prone to developing intrusive levels of death anxiety than men, and people with mental illnesses and mood disorders have a higher risk of developing persistent, fearful preoccupations with death. Researchers have also noted that death anxiety can quickly soar to unprecedented heights in people who have recently been exposed to traumatic or life-threatening situations, and while death anxiety often makes a gradual return to baseline levels in such cases, it sometimes lingers for the long term.

While it might seem logical to presuppose that death anxiety continually intensifies as a person ages, empirical studies have suggested that older people generally have lower levels of death anxiety than people in middle age. Researchers have also found that the nature of death anxiety displays different characteristics at different stages of life. For young people, an early death that deprives them of the opportunity to achieve their life goals seems to be the most common mechanism. In contrast, older people who struggle with death anxiety frequently cite the opposite problem: a fear of living too long and burdening loved ones and caregivers. Middle-aged adults often cite anxieties about dying alone, dying in the presence of strangers, and losing control over the handling and placement of their remains after death.

Religious belief appears to offer little in the way of tangible respite from death anxiety, largely because individual believers may draw very different conclusions from a specific faith tradition's usual teachings about death. Historical evidence also seems to suggest that religious belief and worship do not have predictable effects on death anxiety, reducing it in some cases while increasing it in others.

Bibliography

Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1973.

Darcy, Andrea M. "Death Anxiety—When a Fear of Dying Is Stopping You Living." Harley Therapy, 8 Mar. 2023, www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/death-anxiety-fear-of-death.htm. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.

Freud, Sigmund. "Thoughts for the Times on War and Death." The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. 4, 1953.

"Helping Clients Navigate Death Anxiety." Mental Health Academy, 5 Nov. 2024, www.mentalhealthacademy.com.au/blog/helping-clients-navigate-death-anxiety. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.

Iverach, Lisa, et al. "Death Anxiety and Its Role in Psychopathology: Reviewing the Status of a Transdiagnostic Construct." Clinical Psychology Review, vol. 34, no. 7, Nov. 2014, pp. 580–93.

Kastenbaum, Robert. The Psychology of Death, 3rd ed., Springer, 2000.

Kellehear, Allan. The Inner Life of the Dying Person. Columbia UP, 2014.

Lehto, Rebecca Helen, and Karen Farchaus Stein. "Death Anxiety: An Analysis of an Evolving Concept." Research and Theory for Nursing Practice: An International Journal, vol. 23, no. 1, 2009, pp. 23–41.

Stillon, Judith M., and Thomas Attig. Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Contemporary Perspectives, Institutions, and Practices. Springer, 2014.

"Thanatophobia (Fear of Death)." Cleveland Clinic, 20 Apr. 2022, my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22830-thanatophobia-fear-of-death. Accessed 12 Dec. 2024.