Death in the Absence of Fear: A Thematic Analysis of Lack of Death Fears

Background and Purpose: Despite the universal nature of mortality, death continues to elicit feelings of discomfort. This discomfort, called death anxiety, often obstructs individuals from completing the work necessary to ensure a good or respectful death. Social work’s status as one of the most predominant aging and end-of-life care professions undergirds death anxiety’s role in social work practice and research. The majority of death anxiety research has focused on factors associated with increased death anxiety. Nevertheless, a more comprehensive understanding of death anxiety is needed to ensure effective social work service provision in the pursuit of a good or respectful death for clients. Using terror management theory, this study took a novel approach by exploring individuals’ self-reported reasons for their lack of death anxiety.

Methods: Data were gathered from an online discussion thread initiated by the question “For those of you who don’t fear death, why?”, which was posted on November 8, 2017 to the social media site Reddit.com and received 1,300 responses. The researchers copied and pasted the publicly-available data into Word documents. Data were coded in Dedoose, using thematic analysis and the constant comparative method. Analyst triangulation and audit trails were used to enhance the trustworthiness of results.

Results: The analysis yielded four primary themes regarding what individuals perceived as preventing or alleviating their fear of death. The first theme was prior experience or exposure to death, which included firsthand experiences (e.g., near-death experiences) and secondhand experiences (e.g., death of a loved one or frequent exposure to death via one’s occupation). The second theme was the belief that death is simply a characteristic of life. This included the belief that fear of death takes away from enjoyment of life, death itself gives meaning to life, as well as general feelings of nihilism. The third theme involved sense of control and included feelings that there was no controlling the inevitability of death, as well as some perception of a level of control over death. Finally, the fourth theme centered around what comes after death and was split into those who felt there would be something, those who felt there would not be, and those curious regardless of outcome. For those believing nothing came after death, solace was taken in the belief of existential absence. Those who believed in an afterlife were comforted by their religious beliefs, along with the thought of reuniting with loved ones.

Conclusions and Implications: These results illustrate the primary reasons why individuals do not fear death. The results showing these particular psychological defenses used to mitigate death anxiety mirror the tenets of terror management theory. As leaders in aging and death, these findings present significant implications for social work practice and research. Regarding the former, these findings provide a robust outlook on the human experience surrounding death. Exploring the utility of these themes with dying clients may improve social work efficacy and provide psychological relief to clients. Regarding the latter, these results represent potential leverage points to consider in the development of intervention research.