Children of the elderly are inapt in assessing death anxiety in their own parents.

Daily the geriatric multidisciplinary staff encounters Death Anxiety (DA), whether in the patient or family member, and its existence impairs the ability to make unbiased decisions. Since children are often intimately involved in the decision making process with or for their elderly parent, the child’s belief in the existence of Death Anxiety in their parents may prevent flow of information, sometimes against the law. Death Anxiety is defined by two separate but connected constructs: fear of death, and fear of the dying process (Depaola et al., 2003). It is reported to peak in middle-age but disappear in the elderly (Twelker, 2006), an important finding for the physician. Studies have examined DA in the young and elderly separately, but none have related to children’s ability to assess the level of DA in their own parents. The working hypotheses for this study were that the level of Death Anxiety would be higher in the children, the elderly would fear more the dying process and finally that the children would be unable to assess correctly the level of Death Anxiety in their own parent. METHOD AND RESULTS