Objectives

Mortality is the word which defines the human existence, the fact of everybody’s life that death is uncertain and one day it will happen. It has been asserted by many psychologists that people have a fear of their own decency. The great Epicurus proposed an argument about death and survival that is, ‘death is not a major concern for all, because till the  time we all are here it(death) is not with us and when it does come, our lives finish, we no longer survive. Still it is the anxiety among people’s min running all the time which the question about the mortality of our lives (Chan, & Yap, 2009, pp: 1-16.). The thesis will revolve around the idea of “Death anxiety: what causes it and why?”

Under this thesis statement further it is explained that what are the reasons due to which death anxiety occurs that is why people fear of death. Further the objectives covered under this are as follows

• to investigate that why people feel fear of oblivion
• to evaluate the emotional attachmentof the people
• to investigate that fear of sufferingleads to fear of death
• to evaluate the fear of fulfillment of  dreamswhich leads to fear of death
• to investigate other sourcesthrough which a person gets such information about death and dying process of different individual

Death anxiety is caused inside a person of every age group whether being a child or a mature person. It is all about the mental state that what a person feel and why they fear of death. Different individuals have their different reason to have this depending upon the kind of life they live (Iverach, Menzies, & Menzies, 2014, pp: 580-593.). But as it is said that nothing is immortal one has to die and get into the dust from where they originated. Adding to it the reasons why a person gets this death anxiety are as follows:

Disappearance, it is the thought which comes in every person’s mind when they think of demise. Many people have this illusion in their brain that when they will die nobody will remember them after that. As it is the nature of a human being that they want to be important in people’s life due to which they feel that when they won’t be there in front of their loved ones, everyone will forget them. And will also forget that what they did for them (Martin, et. al., 2014, pp: 321-333.). So instead of loving and remembering them, other people will carry on their lives and someone else will replace their position which they used to hold in others’ lives.

Throughout the process of our life, we all love someone get attached to them and never think of leaving them. But this happens most of the times that with the feeling of love; fear also comes. The fear that one day if they will leave them how their loved ones will survive without them, who will take care and look after their needs. A person also gets this feeling that what will happen if their loved ones will leave them. So because of being attached to other people, a person often fears of death and decay (Furer, & Walker, 2008, pp: 167-182.).

Fear of Oblivion

Emotional attachments make a person feel more about the good and bad times. When a person feels happiness in their lives, they don’t want it to end ever due to which get this of anxiety that if they will die or someone around them will die everything will change and their happiness will convert into sorrow. Also more than god they are emotionally attached to human being that makes it hard for them to leave this circle of life (Lehto, & Stein, 2009, pp: 23-41).

Fear of suffering can related to death anxiety in such a way that people are scared of pain and disabilities. And these things leads to demise due to which people fear of death. Diseases like cancer and AIDS which are very treacherous in nature and cause much pain to the deviants and other disabilities in body are the things which a person fear while thinking as well (Lester, Templer, & Abdel-Khalek, 2007, pp: 255-260). It is because people don’t want to experience such dense pain which can also lead to their death.

Therefore people have this psychological thinking that diseases will make them come near to death. Even if there would be some chance of them to live then also they would die because of their negative mentality. Although fear of death is world fear but this anxiety can lead to major problems to the person suffering from it and they shall look after its treatment (Lin, et al., 2009, pp: 414-421).

Every person in their life has some goals and dreams set for them which they want to achieve. Getting any barrier between their goals makes them depressed due to which they to remove those barricades as early as possible. It makes every person feel that they should not leave this world until unless they don’t live the life which they have dreamt of. This feeling of achieving their dreams on time makes them happy but if they get acknowledged with some unfortunate event in their life, then it scares them with a feeling of what if they die before fulfilling their dreams (Mykletun, et al., 2007, pp: 323-331).

Dreams are the things which a person tends to have since childhood and they remain with them till the time they don’t achieve them. everybody wishes to have a life and want to live that kind of life and don’t to die before that so that is why they have this fear that while moving on the path of their dreams while they are in their developing phase they don’t want any mishappening in their which will make them away from their dreams. Nor they want death to come before they fulfill their dreams (Neimeyer, 2015, pp: 217- 231). They want to make some output of their lives by achieving their goals and living a happy life and making their loved ones happy. Therefore they always get attract to death anxiety that what if they have to come face to face with death before fulfilling their dreams and they don’t want to go so early.

Emotional Attachments

Death anxiety is feeling which can be caused to anyone because of any reason, it can be because of something they are afraid of like hydrophobia or claustrophobia etc. or it can be any other reason. Now a day due to having main threat in the environment, it is very common that people have death anxiety but having anxiety in an excess is a serious concern shall be consulted with doctor (Ng, et al., 2007, pp: 60-67).

Some other factors of death anxiety may be because of something people have fear of like, some people tend to have fear of height or water to which they think that if they will go close to it, they will death; this can led to death anxiety. Also many rumors spread in the society now a day that people get to know that how death causes to people. Also they get to know some worst scenario in which people get very painful death due to which they fear of pain and death because generally nobody wants to have unnatural death at the wrong time. Also there are some myths like; people who do sins will get punished by god after they due to which every person becomes scared of death after thinking of life after death.

Conclusion

In my opinion death is a liability which comes one day in everybody’s life and everyone has to pay off their debt. So why worry about that tomorrow which is unseen. In fact look for the happiness of life. And try to ignore things that make one person depressed and make them fear of death (Routledge, & Juhl, 2010, pp: 848-854). Having death anxiety to some extent is normal in every person but it might become a major problem as well.

References

Chan, L. C., & Yap, C. C. (2009). Age, gender, and religiosity as related to death anxiety. Sunway Academic Journal, 6, pp: 1-16.

Iverach, L., Menzies, R. G., & Menzies, R. E. (2014). Death anxiety and its role in psychopathology: Reviewing the status of a transdiagnostic construct. Clinical psychology review, 34(7), pp: 580-593.

Martin, R. J., et. al., (2014). Disordered gambling and co-morbidity of psychiatric disorders among college students: An examination of problem drinking, anxiety and depression. Journal of Gambling Studies, 30(2), pp: 321-333. 

Furer, P., & Walker, J. R. (2008). Death anxiety: A cognitive-behavioral approach. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 22(2), pp: 167-182.

Lehto, R. H., & Stein, K. F. (2009). Death anxiety: an analysis of an evolving concept. Research and theory for nursing practice, 23(1), pp: 23-41.

Lester, D., Templer, D. I., & Abdel-Khalek, A. (2007). A cross-cultural comparison of death anxiety: A brief note. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 54(3), pp: 255-260.

Lin, E. H., Heckbert, S. R., Rutter, et al., (2009). Depression and increased mortality in diabetes: unexpected causes of death. The Annals of Family Medicine, 7(5), pp: 414-421.

Mykletun, A., Bjerkeset, O., et al., (2007). Anxiety, depression, and cause-specific mortality: the HUNT study. Psychosomatic medicine, 69(4), pp: 323-331.

Neimeyer, R. A. (Ed.). (2015). Death anxiety handbook: Research, instrumentation, and application. Taylor & Francis. pp: 217- 231

Ng, T. P., Niti, M., et al., (2007). Depressive symptoms and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: effect on mortality, hospital readmission, symptom burden, functional status, and quality of life. Archives of internal medicine, 167(1), pp: 60-67.

Routledge, C., & Juhl, J. (2010). When death thoughts lead to death fears: Mortality salience increases death anxiety for individuals who lack meaning in life. Cognition and Emotion, 24(5), pp: 848-854.

Nia, H. S., et al., (2016). Death anxiety among nurses and health care professionals: A review article. International journal of community based nursing and midwifery, 4(1), pp: 2.