The What Keeps Death Anxiety Going? handout presents key factors that maintain death anxiety.
Offers theory, guidance, and prompts for mental health professionals. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
Includes client-friendly guidance. Downloads are in Fillable PDF format where appropriate.
The “What Keeps It Going?” series is a set of one-page diagrams explaining how common mental health conditions are maintained. Friendly and concise, they provide an easy way for clients to understand at a glance why their disorders persist, and how they might be interrupted.
What Keeps Death Anxiety Going? is designed to help clients experiencing death anxiety understand more about their condition.
Understanding what keeps death anxiety going is crucial for effective intervention. By identifying these factors, therapists can develop idiosyncratic models of clients' experiences and focus their interventions.
Designed to help clients affected by death anxiety.
Explain to the client that certain difficulties persist due to cycles that maintain them.
Use the handout to discuss what might be keeping the client's difficulties going.
Pinpoint and personalize maintaining factors that are relevant to the client.
Explore how these maintaining cycles can be interrupted.
Concerns about dying or losing a loved one are a normal part of life. However, if concerns about death (or dying) are extremely distressing, time-consuming, or stop individuals from doing important things, it could be a sign of death anxiety. Some of the key signs of death anxiety include feeling extremely distressed about death and dying; spending considerable time dwelling on one's death or other people dying; and having unwanted and distressing images related to death (‘intrusions‘).
Research studies indicate that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for death anxiety. CBT therapists work a bit like firefighters: while the fire is burning they’re not so interested in what caused it, but are more focused on what is keeping it going, and what they can do to put it out. If they can work out what keeps a problem going, they can treat the problem by interrupting the cycles that maintain it.
The What Keeps Death Anxiety Going? information handout describes some of the key factors which act to maintain death anxiety, illustrating them in a vicious cycle or 'flower' format in which each ‘petal’ represents a separate maintenance cycle. Helping clients to understand more about these processes is an essential part of cognitive therapy for death anxiety. Therapists can use this handout as a focus for discussion, or as a template from which to formulate an idiosyncratic model of a client’s experiences.
