Social Anxiety Disorder and the Fear of Death: An Empirical Investigation of the Terror Management Approach towards Understanding Clinical Anxiety

Death anxiety and mental health: Requiem for a dreamer

Recently, there has been an increased interest in the role of death anxiety in a broad range of mental health disorders. It has been argued that the fear of death may be a transdiagnostic variable contributing to the development and maintenance of many chronic mental health problems. Further, it has been suggested that death anxiety may be responsible for relapse and the emergence of new disorders in patients that have received successful treatment for earlier conditions in their lives. Given this, the purpose of the present selective review is to: (1) explore contemporary theoretical accounts of the role of death anxiety in a broad range of human behaviours; (2) examine evidence for death anxiety as a key variable in mental health disorders; (3) examine evidence on the treatment of death anxiety in both non-clinical and clinical populations; (4) describe the limitations of the current literature, and; (5) provide a detailed description of the critical future directions for this field.

Meaning in life, psychological hardiness and death anxiety: individuals with or without generalized anxiety disorder (GAD)

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a widespread psychiatric disorder. According to the transdiagnostic approach, death anxiety can underpin predominantly somatic manifestations of GAD. Personal resilience factors such as a sense of a meaningful life, and psychological hardiness, which can protect people from developing clinical symptoms, may be lower in individuals with GAD. So far, there has been no study examining the role of meaning in life dimensions, death anxiety, and hardiness in individuals with GAD in Turkey. Thus, we aimed to investigate to what extent the GAD sample differs from the non-anxious control group in terms of death anxiety, meaning in life dimensions, and hardiness. Secondly, we examined how conceptually predicted death anxiety by meaning in life dimensions and hardiness regardless of diagnosis, age, and gender. Just before the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, we could only recruit 38 individuals with GAD and 31 non-anxious control subjects. The Death Anxiety Scale, The Meaning in Life Questionnaire and the Psychological Hardiness Scale were administered to all the participants. The one-way MANOVA results with Bonferroni adjustment revealed that individuals with GAD significantly differed from the control group in every way. Hierarchical regression analysis displayed that the presence of meaning made the most significant contribution in predicting death anxiety. In conclusion, existential issues such as death anxiety, hardiness, and meaningful life can be emphasized for the treatment of GAD, and the presence of meaning is the most crucial antidote to avoid death anxiety in all individuals.