Fear of death and physical illness: A personal construct approach

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Abstract
The Threat Index, Templer's Death Anxiety Scale, and the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale were administered to 100 respondents in an attempt to assess their personal orientation toward death. Each respondent was a member of one of the following groups: people with no known illness; people attending their family physician for a checkup; rheumatoid arthritics; diabetics; or people recently treated for cancer. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses indicated that older respondents were significantly less death anxious, less fearful of their own death, and more integrated (that is, showed less self-death discrepancy) than younger respondents. Further analyses revealed no differences between any of the groups on fear of death or death anxiety, indicating that the current state of an individual's health was not related to his or her death orientation. Instead, correlational and regression analyses suggested that anxiety and fear were much more likely to be influenced by a respondent's level of actualization and, to a lesser extent, level of integration. The expected additive effects of actualization and integration did not emerge, a finding that was at variance with previous research. The present study found a significant relationship between actualization and orientation toward death, with higher levels of actualization being associated with reduced death anxiety and fear of death. In addition, it was found that physical illness did not influence death anxiety or fear of death in any detectable way. Together, these findings have implications for the management and understanding of seriously ill and dying patients. Although the relationship between actualization and death orientation was clear-cut in the present investigation, the relative lack of unique effects for integration was troublesome and inconsistent with the past literature. Future research with the TI is needed in order to further investigate the possible independent and additive effects of these two variables in both healthy and ill populations.

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