Death anxiety
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of death. One source defines death anxiety as a "feeling of dread, apprehension or solicitude (anxiety) when one thinks of the process of dying, or ceasing to 'be'". Also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), death anxiety is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of dead or dying people and/or things (i.e., fear of others who are dead or dying, not of one's own death or dying).
Additionally, there is anxiety caused by death-recent thought-content, which might be classified within a clinical setting by a psychiatrist as morbid and/or abnormal, which for classification pre-necessitates a degree of anxiety which is persistent and interferes with everyday functioning. Lower ego integrity, more physical problems and more psychological problems are predictive of higher levels of death anxiety in elderly people perceiving themselves close to death.
Death anxiety can cause extreme timidness with a person's attitude towards discussing organ donation and anything to do with death.
See also
- Death row phenomenon
- Eschatology
- Immortality
- The Denial of Death
- Afterlife
- Mortality salience
- Necrophobia
