Depression and Death Anxiety in Middle Adulthood

Middle adulthood is known as a period bodily changes and adjustments required to be made psychologically by the individual. Due to hormonal changes in middle adulthood and one's outlook of past achievements and experiences when compared to their current productivity rate, one may become depressed. Age as a factor by itself may be a cause for depression and also death anxiety, where one starts to contemplate the idea of death to be nearing and thus fear death. The study on "Depression and Death Anxiety in Middle Adulthood" was conducted in Coimbatore Tamil Nadu. The sample consisted of 61 randomly selected adults (28 male and 33 female) in the age range of 40 to 60 years. The prevalence of depression and death anxiety were assessed using Beck Depression Inventory (1971) and Death Anxiety Inventory (Donald Temple, 1970) respectively. It was found that majority of the sample suffer from depression at the mild level and middle aged men are prone to milder forms of depression while middle aged women are more prone to moderate and higher levels of depression. When comparing the male and female population, more percentage of the female population suffers from death anxiety than the male population. Statistically significant correlations were found between age and depression, age and death anxiety and depression and death anxiety. There were positive correlations between having married children with both depression and death anxiety for the parents of those children and between depression and years of marriage.