Can spirituality make you less worried about death? Maybe.

If you’re feeling anxious about dying, Regan Thompson might know why. The UFV student spent the past few months studying death anxiety—the fear of death for ourselves and others—and how it relates to both age and spirituality.

Her research, which won UFV’s President Award, was sparked by an interest in how we handle death. She studied the topic in one of her UFV courses, but also experienced it firsthand a few months before her research began: a young friend from her Abbotsford high school died in a traumatic event, and an elderly great-uncle in Ontario passed away. The experiences showed Thompson her own perspective on death anxiety, and helped launch the study, which surveyed 308 adults. Participants were asked about both their anxiety about dying and their spiritual well-being, which has often been connected to reduced death anxiety. Thompson’s research explored that question, and she also found that the older a person got, the less death anxiety they had. But, as Thompson learned, there’s more to it than that.

FVC: What part of your research stuck out for you?

Thompson: "The main one was that people who had higher levels of spirituality did have lower levels of death anxiety. So it did show that spirituality does have that buffering effect... But when we looked at specific religious affiliations... I found it really interesting that those who had higher religious well-being scores also had [comparatively] higher death anxiety scores. Those with the higher religious well-being scores were those that identified as Catholic, and also those who identified as Sikh and Hindu, whereas those who scored higher on the existential well-being scores had less death anxiety…. [But] I found it really interesting that people perceived that both their religion and spirituality helped to buffer anxiety. And so that was almost a contradictory finding, that the actual physical scores showed that religion led to higher death anxiety, but people didn't perceive that."

According to Thompson, religious well-being focuses on a person’s relationship with God or their trust in a greater power. Existential well-being, for Thompson, was a broader category, that included spirituality, but also focused on a person’s love of life and whether they are content.

FVC: What do you hope will happen because of research like yours?

"What I would really like to see is just more ways that we can buffer this. Spirituality is just one way. I'm sure there are a lot of other types of coping mechanisms that are out there, that psychologists, government programs, even just the general population can help adopt…. This happens to everybody, right? Nobody is necessarily exempt from grief and loss and stuff like that. And if it comes with depression, and loneliness, and other effects, we should find ways to buffer it.…. Right now, we're still learning about the effects of pandemics, the psychological effects and the long-term effects and things like that, too. So I'm hoping that somewhere perhaps this study will help contribute to that literature as well."

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Perhaps one of the most lasting impressions from Thompson’s work is how eager people are to share their perceptions of death. Of the 308 people Thompson surveyed, 275 provided responses to her open-ended online questions. Although we may be anxious about death, Thompson’s research shows we still want to talk about it.