DEATH ANXIETY SCALE

Abstract

Patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD) have the symptoms of anxiety incommon that may result in adverse outcomes. Objectives: Due to the significant associationof anxiety and CVD, scheduled screening of all cardiac patients has been recommended bythe medical authorities like the American Heart Association. But in Pakistan it is not a commonpractice to use such tools, reason being unavailability of such screening tools in nationallanguage therefore specifically death anxiety is unrecognized and no measures are takenfor it and patients remain undertreated with death anxiety that may eventually influence onthe treatment and prognosis of the patients. Data source& Settings: Colleges and hospitalsof the Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Period: 6 months. Methods: The study was designed totranslate and validate the Death Anxiety Scale in Urdu language to be used with Pakistanipopulation. The sample consisted of 210 participants (70 Youngsters (normal group) 70 Elderlyand 70 patients with cardiovascular diseases (clinical group) from colleges and hospitals of theRawalpindi and Islamabad. To determine the psychometric properties, reliability and validity;cronbach alpha, split-half reliability, correlation, factor analysis were computed. Results: DeathAnxiety Scale-Urdu (DAS-U)( ) has adequate reliability and validity. Factor analysisshowed multifaceted structure for the DAS-U, bearing in mind the apposite psychometriccharacteristics; it can be used in researches about death anxiety. Conclusions: The use ofthe scale is reasonable for the measurement of death anxiety in CVD patients and it can beemployed in order to have successful treatment and improve the prognosis of the patients.