This study was undertaken to construct a brief, reliable, and valid questionnaire for measuring attitudes toward death and dying. In Stage 1, four groups of individuals ranging in age from 30 to 82 years completed the Death Anxiety Questionnaire (DAQ), a brief anxiety scale (MAS), and a depression scale (DP). During Stage 2, results on these scales were cross-validated on a new sample of subjects, and the Templer and Dickstein measures of death anxiety were also completed. Internal consistency of the DAQ as determined by coefficient alpha was .83 (n = 230) and test-retest reliability was .87 (n = 30). No significant sex or age differences were found for any of the groups tested. Results provided evidence for both construct and concurrent validity of the DAQ and for discriminant validity of the items. A principal-components factor analysis suggested four independent dimensions of death anxiety: Fear of the Unknown; Fear of Suffering; Fear of Loneliness; and Fear of Personal Extinction. Recommendations for future research include an investigation of the degree to which scores on these four dimensions might differentiate among different sex, age, personality, affective, and diagnostic groupings.

Depression is explored as a narcissistic disturbance in which the self is unconsciously expected to accomplish grandiose expectations and is regarded as a failure when it does not. These omnipotent fantasies include the prevention of object loss and triumph over death. In the later years difficulties in maintaining self-esteem, an essential component of a cohesive self, can predispose one to depression since aging unavoidably involves dwindling opportunities, failing health and loss of loved ones, making it difficult to reach out for what life still has to offer.A psychotherapeutic approach is outlined, focusing on the treatment of depression as a search for the lost self in which the development of healthy narcissism in Kohut's sense, is seen as activating arrested or inhibited ego functions. The development of a positive cathexis of the self is seen as a safeguard against the self destruction implicit in deep depression. This psychotherapeutic approach is demonstrated in a clinical vignette showing how it opened up a new life for a suicidally depressed woman in her sixties who was immobilized by a conviction that to be dependent in any way was an unbearable humiliation leading to narcissistic rage which could overwhelm her sense of self.In helping a patient to search for her/his lost self, the therapist willl hopefully be absorbed as an empathic self-object to become the foundation for the patient's self-soothing. In staying close to the patients' self-needs, therapists can rediscover neglected parts of their own selves.

Figure drawings were obtained from 72 normal adults, 48 adult psychiatric inpatients, 30 senior citizens, and 33 elderly inpatients in a mental hospital. Blind analyses were carried out for "emotional indicators" and other characteristics such as body image disturbance and intellectual impairment. Significant differences were found on almost all measures between the normal elderly and the normal adult. They were also found to discriminate between the normal adult group and the adult psychiatric patients. Very few differences were found between the normal elderly and elderly psychiatric patients, or between normal elderly and adult psychiatric patients. These results imply that norms based upon figure drawings of children or adults may not apply to the elderly and that, therefore, figure drawings may be a less useful diagnostic tool for elderly people than they are for children or adults.

Community based geriatric outpatients (N:67) were involved in a 12-session group resocialization program conducted at a municipal hospital. Meetings were taped and records kept on all group interactions. Short-term behavioral changes in quality of group participation and evaluation of the group experience by the members are reported. Comparison is made between the two experimental groups led by a trained group leader who used group intervention techniques and two "talk" groups in which the leader played a non-intervention role. Results indicate that experimental group members showed changes toward more active problem-solving approaches over time and maintained a lively group tempo. "Talk" group members remained fixed at one level evidencing little change along with a depressed tempo during group sessions.

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