death anxiety

[ deth ang-zahy-i-tee ]

noun

, Psychiatry.

1. a morbid awareness of mortality, together with an extreme fear of one’s own death, the process of dying, the afterlife, or the death of a loved one: The data may show a negative correlation of death anxiety and religiosity.

   There wasn’t a single negative event that triggered my existential death anxiety—just the intrusive, obsessive thought of not existing.

   The data may show a negative correlation of death anxiety and religiosity.

Word History and Origins

Origin of death anxiety¹

First recorded in 1960–65

Example Sentences

Other research has shown that such people are also more vulnerable to death anxiety than are liberals and moderates.

From Salon

Maybe it has to do with the therapist who said that her indecisiveness and deep curiosity about seeing through someone else’s eyes, which she’s harbored since childhood, could be chalked up to something called “death anxiety.”

From New York Times

“It reveals the choice of magic as the most suitable ritual technology to manage death anxiety and phantom menaces.”

From New York Times

It wasn’t just death anxiety that Baumbach recognized in Elfman — he seized on every facet of the composer’s split musical personality: both the wild rock ‘n’ roller from Oingo Boingo and the zany, gothic music act in Tim Burton’s cinematic circus, but also the sweet and dramatic serenader of such serious films as “Good Will Hunting” and “Milk.”

From Los Angeles Times

The data to date show using psilocybin in a controlled therapeutic environment decreases death anxiety, increases optimism and quality of life for people near the end of life.

From Slate