death anxiety death anxiety death anxiety is anxiety caused by thoughts of one's own death, and is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death). individuals affected by this kind of anxiety experience challenges and adversities in many aspects of their lives. death anxiety is different from necrophobia, which refers to an irrational or disproportionate fear of dead bodies or of anything associated with death. death anxiety has been found to affect people of differing demographic groups as well, such as men versus women, young versus old, etc. death anxietyother namesthanatophobiaan illustration from la fontaine's fable "la mort et le mourant" depicting the grim reaperspecialtyclinical psychology, psychiatry psychotherapist robert langs 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, about death, which sometimes is 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 interferes with everyday functioning. this high level of death anxiety in the elderly (who perceive themselves as close to death), can cause lower ego integrity, more physical problems as well as an increase in psychological problems. death anxiety has also been linked to causing a person to become extremely timid or distressed when discussing anything to do with death and several mental health conditions. one meta-analysis of psychological interventions targeting death anxiety showed that death anxiety can be reduced using cognitive behavioral therapy. types robert langs distinguishes three types of death anxiety: predatory death anxiety predatory death anxiety arises from the fear of being harmed. it is the oldest and most basic: 615 form of death anxiety, with origins in the first unicellular organisms' set of adaptive resources. unicellular organisms have receptors that have evolved to react to external dangers, along with self-protective, responsive mechanisms made to increase the likelihood of survival in the face of chemical and physical forms of attack or danger.: 616 in humans, predatory death anxiety is evoked by a variety of dangerous situations that put one at risk or threaten one's survival.: 617 predatory death anxiety mobilizes an individual's adaptive resources and leads to a fight-or-flight response, consisting of active efforts to combat the danger or attempts to escape the threatening situation.: 617 predation or predator predation or predator death anxiety is a form that arises when an individual harms another, physically and/or mentally. this form of death anxiety is often accompanied by unconscious guilt. this guilt, in turn, motivates and encourages a variety of self-made decisions and actions by the perpetrator of harm to others. existential existential death anxiety stems from the basic knowledge that human life must end. existential death anxiety is known to be the most powerful form of death anxiety. it is said that language has created the basis for existential death anxiety through communicative and behavioral changes. other factors include an awareness of the distinction between self and others, a full sense of personal identity, and the ability to anticipate the future. the existential psychiatrist irvin yalom asserts that humans are prone to death anxiety because "our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and inevitably, diminish and die." human beings are the only living things that are truly aware of their own mortality and spend time pondering the meaning of life and death. awareness of human mortality arose some 150,000 years ago. in that extremely short span of evolutionary time, humans have fashioned a single basic mechanism through which they deal with the existential death anxieties this awareness has evoked: denial. denial is effected through a wide range of mental mechanisms and physical actions, many of which go unrecognized. while denial can be adaptive in limited use, excessive use is more common and is emotionally costly. denial is the root of such diverse actions as breaking rules, violating frames and boundaries, manic celebrations, directing violence against others, attempting to gain extraordinary wealth and power, and more. these pursuits are often activated by a death-related trauma, and while they may lead to constructive actions, more often than not they lead to actions that are damaging to self and others. theories thanatophobia the term thanatophobia stems from the greek representation of death, known as thanatos. sigmund freud hypothesized that people express a fear of death as a disguise for a deeper source of concern. he asserted the unconscious does not deal with the passage of time or with negations, which do not calculate the amount of time left in one's life. under the assumption people do not believe in their own deaths, freud speculated it was not death people feared. he postulated one does not fear death itself, because one has never died. he suspected death-related fears stem from unresolved childhood conflicts. thanatophobia is not only death anxiety, but can mean an intense fear, and feelings of overall dread in relation to one's thinking about death. usually it relates to one's personal death. death anxiety can mean fear of death, fear of dying, fear of being alone, fear of the dying process, etc. different people experience these fears in differing ways. klein in 1948 states that humans are the only species that have a sense of what the limitations associated with life are, and because of this, death is a cause of anxiety. there continues to be confusion on whether death anxiety is a fear of death itself or a fear of the process of dying. those who are moving towards death will undergo a series of stages. in kubhler-ross's book on death and dying (1969), she describes these stages thus: 1) denial that death is soon to come, 2) resentful feelings towards those who will yet live, 3) bargaining with the idea of dying, 4) feeling depressive due to death being inescapable, 5) finally, acceptance. wisdom: ego integrity vs. despair developmental psychologist erik erikson formulated the psychosocial theory that people progress through a series of crises as they grow older. the theory also envelops the concept that once an individual reaches the last stages of life, they reach the level he called "ego integrity". ego integrity is when one comes to terms with one's life and accepts it. it was also suggested that when a person reaches the stage of late adulthood, they become involved in a thorough overview of their life to date. when one can find meaning or purpose in one's life, one has reached the integrity stage. reversely, when an individual views their life as a series of failed and missed opportunities, they do not reach the ego integrity stage. people who have attained this stage of ego integrity are believed to exhibit less death anxiety. terror management theory ernest becker based his terror management theory (tmt) on existential views that added a new dimension to previous death anxiety theories. his theory states that death anxiety is not only real, but also people's most profound source of concern. he described the anxiety as so intense that it can generate fears and phobias of everyday life—like fears of being alone, or in confined spaces. according to becker, many everyday human behaviors consist of attempts to deny death and to keep anxiety under strict regulation. his theory suggests that as an individual develops mortality salience, or becomes more aware of the inevitability of death, they will instinctively try to suppress this thought out of fear. this behavior may range from simply thinking about death to the development of severe phobias and desperate behavior.: 603 religiosity can play a role in death anxiety through the concept of fear. there are two major claims concerning the interplay of fear and religion: that fear motivates religious belief, and that religious belief mitigates fear. from these, ernest becker and bronislaw malinowski developed what is called "terror management theory." according to terror management theory, humans are aware of their own mortality which, in turn, produces intense existential anxiety. to cope with and ease the produced existential anxiety, humans will pursue either literal or symbolic immortality. religion often falls under the category of literal immortality, but at times, depending on the religion, can also provide both forms of immortality. it is theorised that those who are either very low or very high in religiosity experience much lower levels of death anxiety, whereas those with a very moderate amount of religiosity experience the highest levels of death anxiety. one of the major reasons that religiosity plays such a large role in terror management theory, as well as in similar theories, is the increase in existential death anxiety that people experience. existential death anxiety is the belief that everything ceases after death; nothing continues on in any sense. seeing how people deeply fear such an absolute elimination of the self, they begin to gravitate toward religion which offers an escape from such a fate. in one specific meta-analysis study that was performed in 2016, it was shown that lower rates of death anxiety and general fear about dying were experienced by those who went day-to-day living their religion and abiding by its practices, compared to those who merely label themselves as members of a given religion, without living according to its doctrines and prescribed practices. a 2009 study on death anxiety in the context of religion showed that christians scored lower for death anxiety than non-religious individuals, which supports the main tenets of terror management theory, that people pursue religion to avoid anxiety about death by finding comfort in the ideas about afterlife and immortality. interestingly, the study also found that muslims scored much higher than christians and non-religious individuals for death anxiety. these findings do not support terror management theory, as the belief in an afterlife caused more anxiety for the muslim participants than those with no belief in an afterlife. this finding highlights a need for further examination into tmt in the context of different religions/sects as well as the impact of varying beliefs about the afterlife on levels of death anxiety. heidegger's being-for-death the german philosopher martin heidegger wrote about death as something conclusively determined, in the sense that it is inevitable for every human being, while on the other hand, it unmasks its indeterminate nature via the truth that one never knows when or how death is going to come. heidegger does not engage in speculation about whether being after death is possible. he argues that all human existence is embedded in time: past, present, future, and when considering the future, we encounter the notion of death. this then creates angst. angst can create a clear understanding in one that death is a possible mode of existence, which heidegger described as "clearing". thus, angst can lead to a freedom about existence, but only if people can stop denying their mortality (as expressed in heidegger's terminology as "stop denying being-for-death"). the american philosopher sidney hook criticized heidegger's view of death anxiety in his review of heidegger's book being and time when it was translated into english in 1962. hook noted that for heidegger, death anxiety "is a primordial anxiety, not something that waxes and wanes with changes in nature, history or society", and the anxiety is about "the possibility that one's existence may at any moment become finally impossible". hook argued that heidegger's claims were wrong: now even when we become aware of this possibility, there is no evidence that we normally become anxious about it, unless the possibility is concretized and seems probable. nor does heidegger advance any reasons why we should be anxious. after all, because we cannot imagine ourselves dead, this hardly justifies the inference that our existence is necessary. what we know about human attitudes towards death indicates that heidegger's generalization is false. some men, and not only figures like socrates and spinoza, have no anxiety in the face of death. men have believed that there are many things which could happen to them that are far worse than death. any sensitive person can think of a variety of circumstances that would make death a happy release, almost a privilege. meaning management theory paul t. p. wong's work on the meaning management theory indicates that human reactions