Thanatophobia is an exaggerated feeling of turmoil, worry and fear associated with death. In many cases, people are able to cope with it and keep this anxiety under control. And if the fear of death disrupts daily life, psychotherapies can treat this phobia.

Definition

Thanatophobia is anxiety caused by exposure to an object or situation related to death. It is manifested by clinical signs, and it often leads to avoidance behavior. It is an unreasonable fear of death in general, of the death of loved ones and of one’s own death.

Types

Thanatophobia is a very widespread anxiety. Most people who experience it are aware of it. On the other hand, some people prefer not to think about it or even deny it. In these cases, the fear of death can lead to pathological and disabling situations.

Causes

Like all phobias, thanatophobia can be triggered by a traumatic event such as the sight of a corpse or the death of a loved one, especially in childhood. It can also be passed on from parents.

But there is not always an obvious cause. In some cases, it simply reflects an excess of anxiety.

Diagnostic

Thanatophobia is a specific phobia whose diagnosis is based on the presence of an intense and lasting fear felt during the confrontation with objects or situations related to death.

Diagnosis is appropriate only if the avoidance, fear, or anxious anticipation of facing death significantly interferes with the patient’s daily habits, professional functioning, or social life.

In people under 18 years of age, symptoms must have persisted for at least six months before this diagnosis is made.

The people concerned

Thanotophobia can affect anyone old enough to be aware of death, and to understand what it means. The fear of death can therefore begin to manifest around the age of 7 or 8.

The fear of death is also sometimes present in a “disguised” way in anxious people who suffer from hypochondria (fear of dying from an illness), agoraphobia (fear of being in danger and of not being able to come out alive), claustrophobia (fear of suffocating death) etc.

Risk factors

Hypersensitive or very anxious individuals tend to ask a lot of questions, especially about existential concepts like death. In these people, this cognitive activity can more easily awaken the awareness of death, and therefore the fear of death.

Thanatophobia is manifested by an intense fear of objects or situations related to death, and avoidance behaviors to flee the feared situation. The thanatophobe finds it difficult to project himself into the future. He develops obsessive behaviors and ideas around the deadline of death, for himself and for others. He worries about not being able to control things, thinks only about sudden death and what happens after death.

The consequences can therefore be social, family or even professional, and they can manifest themselves by the following symptoms:

• Avoidance of anything that could lead to, accelerate death or endanger (sports, driving or even leaving the home).
• Inability to go to a cemetery or a hospital.
• Inability to look at corpses, even in photos or on a screen.
• Insomnia for fear of dying in his sleep.
• Constant anxiety about dying.
• Panic attacks when evoking or confronting death.
• Depression and withdrawal into oneself.

Thanatophobia does not always require management. If there is no particular consequence in the person’s life, it is possible to come to terms with it and keep it under control.

On the other hand, if thanatophobia disrupts their daily life, the person must resort to psychotherapy to treat their fear of death. In this case, the choice of the type of therapy is made according to the motivations of the phobic person, the time and the energy that he can invest in it.

• Cognitive and behavioral therapy. The goal is to reduce or eliminate the symptoms that accompany the phobia. They can provide relief to sufferers within a few months. These therapies consist in gradually exposing the patient to the situation which triggers the fear, until he succeeds in controlling his anxiety.
• Analytically inspired therapy. Talk therapy allows you to do in-depth work on yourself to understand the origin of symptoms.
• Hypnotherapy

There is no drug solution to treat thanatophobia, and phobias in general. On the other hand, anxiolytic drugs can be used occasionally to relieve the symptoms of anxiety when the person has to face the object of his phobia (going to the hospital for an examination or an intervention for example).

The fear of death becomes pathological and disabling, especially in people who prefer not to think about it or even deny it. Discussing the subject freely, talking about death, about lost beings… can help to consider death as real and part of “life” to make it more acceptable and less afraid of it. Concretely, this can help reduce pathological symptoms.