Causes and cure of Necrophobia: Fear of death

Death fear is natural among all humans but when it affects the life of person, then it should be taken seriously. Necrophobia is intense dreadful feeling of death or dead things such as corpses, as well as things linked with death like coffins. 

Fear of death is prevalent in elderly people. For elderly people, fear of death is a natural feeling, ascribed to the need for existence. But a necrophobic might have experienced a harrowing event or maybe even had a brush with death themselves. Necrophobia is a type of phobia, and regarded as anxiety disorder. Term, Necrophobia is derived from the Greek words nekros (corpse) and phobos (fear). It can be simply stated that necrophobia is an irresistible fear of dead stuffs or things related with death. People who experience this kind of fear may develop intense anxiety and fear. They exhibit physical symptoms such as sweating, shaking, panic attack, shortness of breath, dizziness, trembling,and nausea when exposed to objects related to death.  

Patients gripped under necrophobic may develop other fears, such as a fear of leaving their house because facing dead things seems more likely outside, a fear of a violent attack or a sexual assault, or a fear of heights or of being in surrounded spaces. necrophobic people have problems to attend major events like funerals, and may develop severe anxiety symptoms with these situations. People may feel extremely stressed when watching horror films.

Symptoms of Necrophobia:

People who experience fear of death may display following physical symptoms:

shortness of breath,

rapid breathing,

irregular heartbeat,

sweating,

dry mouth and shaking,

feeling sick and uneasy,

psychological instability,

feeling of dread and trepidatio

Phobia has continued for long time and affect health of person. Fear of death is also denoted as thanatophobia or fear of the unknown. Whether the fear concerns the act of dying, things already dead or what comes next, it should not prevent someone from participating in life’s great events.

Causes of necrophobia:

There is no particular reason for developing necrophobia in people. But they experience the following:

-A traumatic childhood encounter with death. If near ones of person died unexpectedly, he/she may develop fear of death.

-When children have exposure to violent media, they are troubled by inappropriate exposure to frightening movies, TV shows, comic books, etc.

-Sometimes, people have near-death experience in their life. This may develop a feeling of fearfulness.

-Another major cause of developing necrophobia is family attitudes about death. Some families have very strong taboos around talking about, grieving, or even acknowledging death.

Effective treatment:

People can conquered Death phobia. It can be accomplished in several different ways such as cognitive-behavioral therapy, medications or a combination of both.

It is well observed in global society that common fears among people is necrophobia, the fear of dying. Sometimes people are frightened of anything that can be related to death, such as funerals, medical centres and violent media, horror films. In extreme cases, this phobia leaves patients crippled with trepidation. Though this phobia is one of the gravest, but patients can fully recover from irrational fear through education and cognitive treatment.