Examines several common human-serving fallacies about suicide as to their validity and discusses these myths in terms of how they operate to reduce anxiety about quality of life and death. Asserts need to dispel myths and seek truths in order to understand and prevent suicide. (Author/NB)

Explored aspects of death anxiety in 77 physicians. Confirmed an inverse relationship between use of repression and overt reports of death anxiety. Found differences between internists, surgeons, and psychiatrists and significant relationships between age, experience, and death anxiety. Younger, less experienced physicians displayed greatest death…

Examined the validity of the sentence completion method in the measurement of death anxiety by administering ten items from five measurers to 80 employees in death-related and non-death-related occupations. Results suggested a conscious concern with the deaths of others and a covert expression of death anxiety characterized death-related…

Examined effects of hospice volunteer training program on locus of control and death anxiety by comparing 29 hospice volunteers who underwent volunteer training course and 30 controls. Results indicated both groups decreased in generalized conscious death fear, but increased in their conscious fear of others' deaths, although experimental…

Explored relationships between factors of Templer's Death Anxiety Scale and measures of subjective state. Findings revealed that, in a general population, Factor I, conceptualized as fear of death, was unrelated to anxiety and depression in contrast to positive correlations provided by Factors II-IV, which were collectively conceptualized as death…

Tests George Homans' contention that religion arouses a sense of anxiety concerning death and then alleviates the anxiety it creates. Evidence seems to indicate that religiosity may serve the dual function of afflicting the comforted and comforting the afflicted. (Author)

A total of 399 individuals completed a lethal behaviors scale and a measure of death anxiety, which were found to have no significant correlation. Predictors of lethalness included doing dangerous things for the fun of it and having ever driven a motorcycle. The most lethal individuals were young, male, and less educated. (Author/ABL)

Examined relationships among death anxiety, disclosure behaviors, and attitudes toward terminal care of 99 oncologists. Found death anxiety scores lower for oncologists than typically reported for physicians. Short-term repeated exposure to dying patients resulted in comfort with dying patients whereas long-term repeated exposure resulted in…

Explores approach to dealing with human death. Describes floating perspective, based on insights from Choron and Jaspers, as suggesting it is possible to deal with human death by refraining from taking ultimate position on the problem. Position encourages openness to death. Examines role of anxiety and describes possible meaningful outcomes of…

It was shown that terminal patients of physicians with high death anxiety survive longer during their final hospital stay than terminal patients of physicians with low death anxiety. Physicians high in death anxiety seem to be less willing to accept patients' terminality and use heroic measures to keep them alive. (Author)

Describes a study of willingness to donate organs for transplantation after death based on Weyant's cost-benefit model for altruistic behavior. Two death anxieties (the attitude toward death and the fear of being declared dead too soon) were introduced to help explain the discrepancy between attitudes and behavior in the matter of organ donation.…

Examined the relationship between sex-role orientation and death anxiety in 237 middle-aged men who completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory and Boyar's Fear of Death Scale. Results indicated neither amount of contact with death nor traditional male sex-role orientation were related to death anxiety. (JAC)

Administered Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) and Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) to 105 individuals. Factor analysis of DAS revealed general factor accounting for 29 percent of extracted variance. First-order factors were also important in factor solution. Pattern of MMPI-DAS correlation suggests that confounding of factors greatly…

Examined religiosity and bereaved mothers' (n=143) and fathers' (n=129) scores on Grief Experience Inventory. High church attendance had significant inverse relationship with death anxiety. Mothers who attended church more frequently reported significantly less loss of control, rumination, depersonalization, and optimism/despair. Church attendance…

Presents dialog among David Lester, author of first critical survey of death anxiety measures, developer of scales, and researcher about suicide and fear of death; Donald Templer, Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) creator; and journal editor. Lester and Templer discuss origins, uses, results, limitations, and future of death anxiety scales and research on…