Theoretical analysis of modern research on the development of attitude to death in adolescence

Abstract

Background. The study relevance is due to the need of expanding approaches to the prevention of maladaptive forms of adolescent behavior. Objective: to find out and consider the features of concepts of death in younger and older adolescence on the basis of analysis of domestic and foreign research. Results. The study considered the cognitive, emotional, and motivational-behavioral components of the adolescents’ ideas of death. It is shown that in the process of becoming a teenager, the cognitive component undergoes certain changes from understanding death as a transition to a different state to realizing the absolute finiteness of existence. At the same time, changes in the value-semantic sphere become of particular importance, when, maintaining the fear of death as the content of emotional component, the hedonistic type of attitude to life comes to the fore, focusing on the feelings of significance and value of life. A mature understanding and attitude to death includes the awareness of irreversibility of the cessation of the body and psyche functioning, the universality and causality of this process. Conclusion. Ideas about death develop with age and differ significantly in younger and older adolescence. The “maturation” of the death concept, awareness of the relationship between life and death is accompanied by the experience of an existential crisis and, as a result, can become a prerequisite for the formation of maladaptive (auto-aggressive) forms of behavior.

Keywords

• attitude towards death
• adolescence
• maladaptive behavior
• fear of death