Spiritual values and death anxiety: Implications for counseling with terminal cancer patients.

Abstract

Death fear as a function of discomfort level, previous experience with death, and religiosity among indigent cancer patients in a county general hospital was investigated. The patients were those participants in the Cancer Rehabilitation Program at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas who were judged closest to death. The Allport Religious Orientation Scale, Discomfort Indices, and the Templer Death Anxiety Scale were administered to each patient. Patients also participated in a .structured interview which examined death fear at the conscious and imagery (unconscious) levels, religious values, and support systems. The Death Anxiety Scale was also administered to a standardization sample of outpatients in the Eye Clinic of the same hospital. Results indicate that these patients depend strongly on perceived strength of religious beliefs and integral religious values in their coping with imminent death. Also highly associated with minimal or low fear of death was previous experience with a dying person with whom one had a close relationship. The mean Death Anxiety Scale score for the cancer patients was significantly lower than that obtained for the standardization population. These findings reveal the various sources of support that are very important to this population and that are suggestive of untapped resources available as appropriate intervention avenues. Because human beings are gifted with the capacity to imagine the future and to relate to this future through the use of symbolic language, awareness of inevitable death becomes an important element in a broad base of attitudes and behaviors. This is particulary true for the fatally ill individual who is continuously confronted by the reality of death. The treatment of the dying patient, however, has been systematically

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