Death, Anxiety, and Depression in Lebanese Undergraduates

Abstract

A Lebanese sample of undergraduates ( n = 228) responded to the Death Anxiety Scale (DAS), Death Depression Scale (DDS), general anxiety (Trait Anxiety; STAI-T), and general depression (Beck Depression Inventory; BDI). Administration of the psychometric instruments was carried out in March 1991, after the cessation of the civil war in Lebanon, which had lasted for sixteen years. Alpha reliabilities were either acceptable or high. The DDS has a meaningful factorial structure. All of the intercorrelations ( r) between the four scales were statistically significant Foremost among them are the following: DAS and DDS r = .709, STAI-T and BDI r = .486, DAS and STAI-T r = .198, DDS and BDI r = .215. Two orthogonal factors were extracted: death distress and general neurotic disorder. The main results are in keeping with previous results on Egyptian and U.S. participants. There is a need to test the differences of the total scores of the aforementioned four scales between the Egyptian and Lebanese samples.