DAS

The Death Anxiety Scale (DAS) is a 15-item true/false self-report measure developed by Donald Templer in 1970 to assess anxiety related to death and dying. Items cover fear of dying, concern about the passage of time, fear of pain, and preoccupation with death. Total scores range from 0 to 15, with higher scores indicating greater death anxiety. The DAS has been used in psychedelic end-of-life research, where psilocybin-assisted therapy has shown significant reductions in death anxiety among cancer patients. Studies at Johns Hopkins and NYU demonstrated that mystical experiences during psilocybin sessions specifically predicted reductions in death anxiety. While relatively simple compared to modern multidimensional death anxiety measures, the DAS remains widely used due to its brevity and extensive validation literature spanning over five decades.