Death concern and attitudes toward the elderly in nursing home personnel

Abstract

The present project investigated the relationship between death fear and threat, attitudes toward the elderly, and personal anxiety toward one's own aging in a group of 145 nursing home employees and a matched comparison group of 130 individuals who worked in non-death related occupations. Contrary to predictions, nursing home personnel did not have higher levels of death threat when compared to controls; in fact, control group subjects had higher levels of death concern on two dimensions of death fear (fear of the dead and fear of significant others dying). However, the results also indicated that increasing levels of death concern were associated with greater anxiety toward aging, especially in the nursing home sample, and nursing personnel displayed significantly fewer positive attitudes toward the elderly than did controls.