Death in late Adulthood

Death in late Adulthood



[Lifespan Development 260IA]

Death

Introduction

Duff & Hong, 2005 defines "death anxiety" as: "the thoughts, fears, and emotions about that final event of living that we experience under more normal conditions of life". In other words, as people live their lives day to day, they suffer different degrees of anxiety about death. Psychologists have attempted to understand what factors might affect the amount of anxiety people feel. (Duff, 2005)

The various factors psychologists have studied in attempting to measure death anxiety include: age, environment, religious faith and ego integrity, or a personal sense of fulfillment and/or self-worth. A complicating aspect of studying death anxiety is that actually "measuring" anxiety as it relates to these variables has been difficult. The studies used in examining death anxiety do not experimentally manipulate the variables, thus limiting conclusions to correlations (Duff, 2005)

An additional confounding factor is the distinction between "death" and "dying." In other words, is the greater source of anxiety associated with death, itself, or the process of dying. In spite of these challenges, a number of researchers have reported conclusive findings relating to the impact of the variables noted above on death anxiety. (Duff, 2005)

Explanation

Early hypotheses focused on age as a probable factor in death anxiety. The initial theories held that as people got older and closer to death, they would have more anxiety about death (Boeck, 2007). To the contrary, a number of studies that have been conducted to date provide evidence that in a significant number of cases elderly people experience less death anxiety than younger people.

Erikson's psychosocial theory, which states that people progress through a series of crises as they age, suggests that in the later stages of life "ego integrity" is attained. That is, a person finds meaning to, and acceptance of, their lives. Erikson proposed that when a person reaches late adulthood he engages in a life review. If a person finds meaning or purpose in his life, he has integrity. Contrary to this, if a person sees their life as a series of missed opportunities they do not attain ego integrity (Goebel & Boeck, 2007) Given Erikson's theory, older adults who find ego integrity should have lower death anxiety.

Some studies have found no age differences in death anxiety scores. Goebel and Boeck's (1987) study found no relationship between death anxiety and age, but the participants used in this study were over the age of 70. In this limited age sample they found low death anxiety scores across the range of ages (Boeck, 2007).

However, it can be argued that this study supports Erikson's theory because the participants in this study could be viewed to be in the ego integrity stage and experiencing less death anxiety. Erikson would say that there are no meaningful differences between the people in this study; therefore we should expect to find no significant differences between them. A theory that could be considered from the (Boeck, 2007) research is that older adults experience less death ...