Changes in Chinese nurses' mental health during 1998-2016: A cross-temporal meta-analysis

In China, nursing is a profession with considerable stress, which may cause both physiological and psychological problems. The present study conducted a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 244 papers using the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) to investigate the changes in the mental health level of Chinese nurses (N = 71,286) from 1998 to 2016. Results showed that (a) relationships between scores of all nine types of mental problems in the SCL-90 and year were significantly positive, indicating that the mental health level of nurses decreased steadily in the past 19 years; (b) relationships between three social indicators (patient-to-nurse ratio, unemployment rate, and divorce rate) and scores of all nine types of mental problems in the SCL-90 were significantly positive, suggesting that the increase in these social indicators may be responsible for the decrease in Chinese nurses' mental health level.