Is Midlife Crisis Triggered By Fear Of Your Own Death?

The psychologist who coined the term "midlife crisis" in 1965 thought that people went through a period of turmoil when they became aware of their inevitable death. In 1976, Gail Sheehy's mega-bestseller Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life told readers that by their forties, they would face a major upheaval when they became aware that "time can run out on us."

The belief that a sudden realization of one's own mortality triggers a midlife crisis is not supported by research.

A follow-up to the Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) survey queried over 700 adults and concluded that

(our) hypothesis was that reports of having a midlife crisis would be associated with the awareness of impending death or shortened future. In general, Americans’ definitions of the midlife crises were much more diverse than this conceptualization implies. Only a few responses explicitly mentioned the awareness of impending death ...

In fact, of 76 people who told researchers they had had a midlife crisis, only two said it was due to the realization that they were closer to death. Only a few more had responses tangentially related to their own death, such as realizing that they would not accomplish certain goals.

Most said their midlife crisis was associated with aging -- such as declining health, or menopause -- or with major life events such as a death in the family or marital difficulty or divorce.

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Sources:

Expecting Stress: Americans and the “Midlife Crisis” - Elaine Wethington in Motivation and Emotion, Volume 24, Number 2, 2000, page 85.

Survey: Wethington, Elaine, Ronald C. Kessler, and Orville G. Brim. Midlife Development In The United States (Midus): Psychological Experiences Follow-Up Study, 1998 [Computer file]. ICPSR02911-v1. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Computer-Assisted Survey Team [producer], 2000. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2005-03-25. Online analysis at the Intra-University Consortium for Social and Political Research.