Investigating Death Anxiety and its Relationship with Some Demographic Variables in Patients with Heart Failure in Zanjan 2018

One of the psychological complications of heart failure is anxiety, especially death anxiety, which leads to poor quality of life in patients and impaired prognosis of the disease.

The purpose of this study was to Investigating Death Anxiety and its Relationship with Some Demographic Variables in Patients with Heart Failure investigate death anxiety level and its association with some demographic variables in patients with heart failure.

It was a descriptive-analytical study conducted on 80 patients with heart failure referring to Valiasr Hospital and Ayatollah Mousavi Zanjan between March 2018 and August 2018. A three-prat questionnaire was used to collect data: 1. Demographic characteristics, 2. Templer death anxiety scale 3. Beck anxiety scale (to determine patients' baseline anxiety). For analyzing the data, descriptive statistics and ANCOVA were used in SPSS v.22 software.

The age range of the patients was between 27 and 98 years, with the highest age group (65 years) with 83.8%. Fifty-two percent of the sample were female (n=42) and 47% were male (n=38). Seventy two point five percent were married, 61% were illiterate, 40% were unemployed and 55% reported poor financial status. The mean score of death anxiety in heart failure patients was 47.95. The highest score of death anxiety in these patients was 61 (1.3%) and the lowest score was 30 (1.3%). More than 90% of patients had moderate (82.5%) and severe (11.25%) death anxiety. The results of ANCOVA showed that the relationship between death anxiety level and employment status variable (P<0.04) was significant.

The results of this study indicated a high death anxiety among the majority of studied population which can be due to lack of adequate training in coping with death anxiety in patients with heart failure. Accordingly, it is suggested that more attention should be paid to mental health authorities in order to improve the mental health of these populations in this area.