There has been little discussion of the effects of brain disease on the awareness and perception of death. Several patients are presented with different types of brain disorders in which death awareness is affected. Brain diseases may prevent the development of the awareness of death or prevent the development of the abstract conception of death. Alternatively, these diseases may result in a loss of death awareness or produce a change in how death is perceived.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
KastenbaumR. and AisenbergR., The Psychology of Death, Springer, New York, 1972.
2.
KoocherG. P., The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 44: 3, pp. 404–411, 1971.
3.
NagyM., The Child's Theories Concerning Death, Journal of Genetic Psychology, 73, pp. 3–27, 1948.
4.
GielenA.RocheK., Death Anxiety and Psychometric Studies in Huntington's Disease, Omega, 10, pp. 135–145, 1979.
5.
LipowskiZ., Delerium in the Elderly Patient, New England Journal of Medicine, 320: 9, pp. 578–582, 1989.
6.
KatzmanR., Alzheimer's Disease, New England Journal of Medicine, 314: 15, pp. 964–973, 1986.
7.
SilveriM.DanieleA.GiustolisiL., and GainottiG., Dissociation Between Knowledge of Living and Nonliving Things in Dementia of the Alzheimer Type, Neurology, 41, pp. 545–546, 1991.
8.
CummingsJ., Clinical Neuropsychiatry, Grune and Stratton, Orlando, Florida, 1985.
9.
KaplanH. I. and SaddockB. J., Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Williams and Wilkins, Baltimore, Maryland, 1989.
