Fear of death

Death anxiety is anxiety of which the cause of the anxiety is 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’". It is also referred to as thanatophobia (fear of death), and is distinguished from necrophobia, which is a specific fear of dead or dying persons and/or things (i.e. others who are dead or dying, not one's own death or dying).

Additionally there is anxiety, of which the cause of the anxiety is death related (in thought-content ), which might be classified within a clinical setting by a psychiatrist as morbid and, or, abnormal, which pre-necessities for classification, therefore, a degree of anxiety which is persistent, and which therefore, interferes with everyday functioning. Lower ego integrity, increased numbers of physical problems, and more psychological problems are predictive of higher levels of death anxiety in elderly people.

Robert Langs distinguishes three types of death anxiety:

Predatory death anxiety arises from the fear of being harmed. It is the most basic and oldest form of death anxiety, with its origins stemming from the first unicellular organisms’ set of adaptive resources. Unicellular organisms have receptors that have evolved to react to external dangers and they also have self-protective, responsive mechanisms made to guarantee survival in the face of chemical and physical forms of attack or danger. In humans, this form of death anxiety is evoked by a variety of danger situations that put the recipient at risk or threatens their survival. These traumas may be psychological and/or physical. Predatory death anxieties mobilize an individual’s adaptive resources and lead to fight or flight, active efforts to combat the danger or attempts to escape the threatening situation.

Predation or predator death anxiety is a form of death anxiety that arises from an individual physically and/or mentally harming another. 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.

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