Levels of Death Anxiety, Essay Example

Beliefs represent the information that dictates how people, places, events, and things make us feel. Feelings mark the emotional reaction to these beliefs. Last, an attitude is defined as a like or dislike towards something, and is generally a learned predisposition.

Levels of death anxiety can change as we move through the major levels of life because these stages mark the differential ability of people to cope with these events. Generally, as people become older, they becoming more accepting of death as a necessary part of life. The different levels of life help people prepare for death differently. For example, individuals that have experienced death of loved ones and have come to understand these experiences and learn to cope are more able to face their own deaths.

Malinowsky believes that religion helps promote solidarity for individuals and that religion can help them cope with the death of their loved ones. Religion can allow people to understand that death happens for a reason. On the other hand, Radcliffe-Brown believes that religion presents people with fears of death that they would not otherwise encounter if it weren’t for their religions.

Kastenbaum’s five premises include the following concepts: that most people use both acceptance and denial-type strategies, that total acceptance and total denial-type strategies occur only in extreme situations, that much of what is called denial is adaptive, that selective responses in interpersonal context must be considered, and that we must understand what the person is trying to accomplish.

The Tao view of life and death emphasizes the unity of nature and states that we find the answer to death as we are transitioning to death. Life can be prolonged by using natural energy.

Five social conditions that result in a limited understanding of death include selective attention, selective response, resistance, denial, and deception. Not thinking about death or avoiding it is a failed experiment because it prevents these people from being able to cope with a true fact that is presented before them.

These scales have little age differentiation, individuals that use it could interpret the results differently, self-reporting creates issues, a large group must be used for comparison purposes, and the results can occasionally only be considered internally valid.

The existential death anxiety theory derives from the realization that life must end. Ultimately, it could be understood through behavior and communication differences. The psychoanalytic theory of death anxiety states that humans have no understanding of death in the unconscious mind and death is a reflection of the fears of external factors. The edge theory of death anxiety fearing death can prevent an individual’s ability to enjoy life. Anxiety is caused by an extreme fear of death. These theories are different because they explain different reasons for the death anxiety to arise. Ultimately, however, our fear of death appears to be a reflection of societal values in most cases.

Denial can be confused with other coping methods because individuals that are in denial can simply act as if nothing has happened. Therefore, this can be easily confused with acceptance, which is acknowledgement that something has happened, but is accompanied with the willingness to move on.

Individuals can be in denial because they are afraid to lose close relationships, because they are undergoing a period of extreme stress, and a willingness to admit feelings to some individuals about the death but not others.

Five common signs in the traditional determination of death dependent lividity, rigor mortis, decomposition, incineration, and failed attempts to resituate.

The five Harvard criteria is defined as the “irreversible coma, or brain death, as unresponsiveness and lack of receptivity, the absence of movement and breathing, the absence of brain-stem reflexes, and coma whose cause has been identified”.

If an individual views death as an event rather than a state, it will be more challenging to cope. An event is indicative of a belief that something can be changed, while a state implies that something is not reversible. It is important to be factual and precise with death.

Three meanings that have been given to death include that it is waiting, that it is nothing, and that it is a continuation of life.

When telling children that death is a long sleep, they will be less able to cope with the death of their loved ones because they are expecting a return. Furthermore, this prevents them from being able to fully understand the permanence of death, which could be damaging when they experience more deaths of loved ones in the future.

The New Age movement towards death is more similar to Islam than to alternative belief systems because they both believe in the continuation of the individual after death. Both cultures view death as a doorway to another life.

A minimally conscious state is indicative of a partial preservation of conscious awareness, a persistent vegetative state is a state of arousal rather than consciousness, a permanent vegetative state is when the persistent vegetative state lasts for longer than 3 months, and a transient vegetative state is when the vegetative state is short term, lasting days or months. Someone is considered to be dead enough to be an organ donor when they are in a permanent vegetative state, because there is little likelihood that they will regain consciousness.

Perpetual development states that death is a part of the universal process, waiting indicates the period that souls must take to transition to the afterlife, and cycling and recycling is indicative of the concept of reincarnation, where souls return back to the living world to start a new life.

The Sirens represent temptation towards death, the Muses represent the acceptance of death, Orpheus represents the defiance of death, and skeletons represent the physical remains of life after death.

Death as the “Great Leveler” indicates that all people are equal once they are dead. Death as the “Great Validator” helps people understand the values of their lives before they are about to die.

The “World Without Death” though experiment results in the recognition of the need for death due to overcrowding, the shifting of societal structure, and an uncertainty of how to treat individuals with diseases and birth defects.

Five careers that are directly connected to the death system include crime scene detectives, funeral directors, embalmers, coroners, and cemetery workers. Careers that are indirectly related to death include doctors, nurses, other hospital workers, florists, and manufacturers of black clothing. Both of these services are needed when people die, but the direct services are needed more as a result of the death while the indirect services could function without death.

Three examples of places associated with the death system include the hospital bed, the morgue, and the cemetery.

The public is worried about the future effectiveness of antibiotics because people are becoming increasingly more resistant to antibiotics. As they are used more and more, they will be less helpful in fighting disease.

The five components of the death system include people, places, time, objects, and symbols and images. These five components are interrelated because these are the different variables that impact the death event and allow people to cope with what has happened. Certain combinations of these variables could contribute to more traumatic experiences, which would make the coping process more difficult.

One function of the death system is caring for the dying. This is related to ethical questions in our society because many people believe that it should be legal to end the lives of those who are suffering, while others believe the life should be preserved. As a consequence, it is important to decide whether it is better to respect the wishes of society or the individual in pain.

The role of human sacrifice in ancient civilizations was to appease the gods, which would help the ability of a greater number of people survive. This was a seen as a way to meet the needs of the many over the needs of the few.

Warnings and predictions are important factors in natural disasters. While prevention via evacuation was not taken seriously during the tsunami, it was taken more seriously during Katrina. This ties into the idea of preventing death, as more deaths were able to be prevented during Katrina as a consequence of these warnings. In both cases, it was challenging to dispose of the dead due to the large amounts, although Katrina had more resources in place to be able to do so. It could be said that the social consolidation after death, in addition to the ability to cope with death was similar in both cases. However, it appears that killing was more prevalent in the aftermath of Katrina due to the greater social instability it caused. Neither event is related to war.

The four contexts that may certify that dying has begun include the physical death of organs, the idea that death begins the moment we are born, the fact that we are aging, and the fact that we recognize death as a psychosocial event.

Four ways that the news of death can be broken to patients include keeping it simple, taking time to determine what the diagnosis means to the patient, do not say anything that is not true, and making it clear that the staff will respond to the needs of the patient.

The four types of expected quick trajectories of dying include certain death at a known time, certain death at an unknown time, uncertain death but a known time when certainty will be established, and uncertain death and an unknown time when the question will be resolved.

In the lingering trajectory, caregivers do the best they can to ensure that the patient will be comfortable as they die, as the patient has been experiencing a slow death. The family’s responsibility is to be patient, and the patient’s role is to learn to expect the death. In the expected quick trajectory, the staff must quickly ensure that the patient is comfortable in a time effective manner. Patients may be exposed to risky procedures that will help prolong their life. The family will typically be vigilant and the patient will quickly be prepared for what is to come. During the unexpected quick trajectory, there is often little that the staff could do to intervene with the death, which is upsetting to them for a variety of reasons. Family members are often in shock, and the death is so quick that the patient is not typically able to react.

Some of the problems that are likely to occur when there is a life or death emergency in a community setting include panic, inappropriate action, and minimizing the danger.

In the observational phase of the study, researchers found that pain was most often experienced during the final three days of life, that patients often did not understand what the physician was talking about, that physicians often misunderstood the wishes of the patients, and that physicians did not follow stated preferences when they were understood. In the intervention phase of the study, there was no increase in patient-physician discussion, physicians continued to disregard patient requests, and that communication problems persisted. This study indicates a need to determine how to improve communication between patients and physicians so that the clients can be made comfortable during their final days.

Four factors that influence the experience of dying include age, gender, relationships, and the opportunity to exercise control over the situation. Age impacts perception because older individuals are more likely to have coped with the death. Furthermore, women deal with death differently than men because they are more likely to be concerned about the well-being of their family. This is also related to the idea of relationships; it’s harder to cope with death when there are more people who will be left behind. Last, the degree of control over the death is important because decision making is an important component of the ability to cope.

According to Kubler-Ross, the five stages of dying include denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Denial is the state in which a person believes that they cannot be dying, anger is recognition of the fact and being upset about it. Bargaining is an attempt to make a deal with fate, depression is understanding that you will not get better, and acceptance is finally coping with the death.

Six criticisms of the stage theory include that the existence of stages as such has not been demonstrated because different people can experience these different stages of grief in different orders or not at all. Next, no evidence has been shown that the stages move in order. Third, the limitations of the method haven’t been noted. There are many alternative theories that seem to be able to properly describe grief and coping for some people, and these differences are not addressed. Fourth, there is no timing associated with each stage in most people, even though Kubler-Ross claims that this should be the case. Fifth, there is too much focus on the death above the life of the person. If we focus on someone according to stages they should be experiencing, they may be treated like less of a person in the process. Last, the environment and pressures on a particular individual can alter their ability to go through these stages. For example, someone who is less stressed may reach acceptance sooner than someone with a lot of stressors.

The Last Acts campaign found that there was a low quality of care being given to terminally ill patients and similar findings were uncovered by the NIH. This demonstrates that there is a greater need to cater to these patients during their last days.