Death Attitudes Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults in Japan: A Qualitative Study Based on Erikson's Theory of Generativity

There are few opportunities for ordinary people not familiar with death to think about it, whereas basic research on death attitudes is insufficient. This study thus examined the attitudes toward death among ordinary people through a qualitative analysis using Erikson's theory of generativity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 middle-aged and older Japanese individuals. The results showed that death attitudes were individualized and consisted of seven components, mainly those related to agency and communion. The change in death attitudes manifested as a change in weight from agency to communion, a change in meaning and perspective, and an orientation toward well-being. In conclusion, the change in death attitudes is to become more generative by balancing agency and communion through the function of narration. This change might be termed "the maturity of death attitudes" because it is oriented toward eudaimonic well-being.

Death Anxiety, Religiosity and Culture: Implications for Therapeutic Process and Future Research

Death anxiety is a common phenomenon that humans experience. It is multidimensional. There has been an upsurged interest around the discussion on death anxiety across the globe, however, much of the literature focuses on the concept of death anxiety, religiosity, and its role in mental health conditions. Further, studies on death anxiety are scattered and at times disconnected. It is important to review existing literature to get an overview of the current direction in research and understand its relevance to facilitate therapeutic processes. In this scoping review, literature was searched in databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and PsychINFO using key words such as “death anxiety”, “fear of death”, religion”, “culture”, and “psychopathology” combined with Boolean operators to narrow down the search results. The initial search yielded 614 records, of which 546 records were removed based on title review (363), abstract review (94), and full-text review (89). Finally, 68 articles were appraised, narratively synthesized, and thematically presented. Major themes revealed in the literature were theoretical frameworks of death anxiety, religiosity, universality, psychological effects of death anxiety, psychopathology, and religious coping strategies. There is a need to assess client’s death anxiety and address them using religious rituals and coping mechanisms.

Spousal Death Anxiety in Old Age

Anxiety toward one’s own death has been extensively studied and conceptualized. However, the fear of death of others particularly of spouse in later life, which may be worse than individual’s death anxiety, has not been investigated. The present research aims to study spousal death anxiety among Malaysian middle-aged and older couples. The study subjects, consisting of 300 couples aged 50 years and older, were obtained from a national cross-sectional survey entitled “Poverty among Elderly Women: Case Study of Amanah Ikhtiar” conducted in Peninsular Malaysia. Women reported significantly higher levels of spousal death anxiety than their partners t(299) = 2.48, p < .05. About 45% of older men and 52% of their spouses reported high spousal death anxiety. The results of two separate stepwise regression analyses yielded a two-variable model for men and a four-variable model for women. The most important concern of older men that may increase spousal death anxiety was caregiving issues. For older women, financial security following widowhood was most important factor toward spousal death anxiety. The findings suggest that the majority of the older couples are prone to death anxiety of their spouse and factors contributing to the fear of death of spouse are different for men and women.

Analysis of RNA from Alzheimer's Disease Post-mortem Brain Tissues

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a uniquely human, age-related central nervous system (CNS) disorder for which there is no adequate experimental model. While well over 100 transgenic murine models of AD (TgAD) have been developed that recapitulate many of the neuropathological features of AD, key pathological features of AD such as progressive neuronal atrophy, neuron cell loss, and neurofibrillary tangle (NFT) formation have not been observed in any TgAD model to date. To more completely analyze and understand the neuropathology, altered neuro-inflammatory and innate-immune signaling pathways, and the complex molecular-genetics and epigenetics of AD, it is therefore necessary to rigorously examine short post-mortem interval (PMI) human brain tissues to gain a deeper and more thorough insight into the neuropathological mechanisms that characterize the AD process. This perspective-methods paper will highlight some important recent findings on the utilization of short PMI tissues in sporadic (idiopathic; of unknown origin) AD research with focus on the extraction and quantification of RNA, and in particular microRNA (miRNA) and messenger RNA (mRNA) and analytical strategies, drawing on the authors' combined 125 years of laboratory experience into this investigative research area. We sincerely hope that new investigators in the field of "gene expression analysis in neurological disease" will benefit from the observations presented here and incorporate these recent findings and observations into their future experimental planning and design.