This study aimed at investigating death anxiety and its related factors in Chinese elderly people during COVID-19. This study totally interviewed 264 participants from four cities in different regions of China. Death anxiety scale (DAS), NEO-Five-Factor Inventory (Neo-FFI) and Brief COPE were scored on the basis of one-on-one interviews. Quarantine experience didn’t make significant difference in death anxiety among the elderly; Elderly people with high death anxiety had higher scores of neuroticism, and were more likely to use a Behavior Disengagement coping strategy; Multiple linear regression analysis showed that neuroticism, openness and COVID impact predicted 44.6% of the variance in the death anxiety among elderly people. The results support both theories of vulnerability-stress model and terror management theory (TMT). In the post-epidemic era, we suggest to pay attention to the mental health status of elderly people with personality susceptibility to handling the stress of infection badly.

The prominent imagery of Menshen (门神door gods) within traditional Chinese culture has led to the development of a variety of cultural symbols, including military door gods, civil door gods, praying door gods, and other related ones, such as stone lions and Shigandang (stone tablets). This article studies the impact of the belief in Door Gods and their worship on Chinese psychology and behaviour on both a conscious and unconscious level. At the conscious level, from its first articulation to its development into a cultural image and related myths and legends, the belief in Door Gods can be said to have gone through four stages: a primitive worship of reproduction in ancient times, animal worship during the Zhou Dynasty, the worship of anthropomorphic gods during the Han Dynasty and the worship of hero gods worship during the Tang Dynasty. This process corresponds to the four specific symbols of ‘peach branch’, ‘tiger/chicken’, ‘Shēn Shū(神荼)’ and ‘Yù Lǜ(郁垒)’ (‘鬼’: the two spirits guarding the entrance of the house), and ‘hero’. On an unconscious level, the psychological symbolism of the belief in Door Gods belief is interpreted through the Door Gods sacrifice and the Fu(复)” hexagram. Closing the door is related to Kun (坤, the receptive, earth), while opening the door is related to Qian (乾, the creative, heaven). Together, Kun and Qian were held to be in a state of continual transition, one changing into the other, which reflects Chinese philosophy’s emphasis on movement. Traditionally, Chinese people held more than 10 kinds of door-related sacrificial activities every year. Although some of these activities have gradually fallen out of use, the traditional custom of pasting door couplets and images of Door Gods to doorways has been preserved. By repeating the ritual every year, the Chinese gain the strength to protect themselves and their family members. Clinical studies of sandplay therapy have found that the image of Door Gods constitutes a ‘patron saint’ on an unconscious level. Door gods guard the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness (the inner and outer worlds), thereby protecting the spiritual strength of those who supplicate them. This suggests that using their images in a therapeutic context could help individuals to maintain boundaries and protect themselves. The emergence of the Door Gods image can transform the guardian energy hidden at the border between unconsciousness and consciousness, help the clients keep the boundary and protect themselves.

In this study, 349 Han and 217 Tibetan college students were investigated via the Templer Death Anxiety Scale in order to assess the potential class and influencing factors of death anxiety among them. In addition, Mplus software was used to analyse the latent categories of their death anxiety, and an R3STEP approach was adopted to perform a multinomial logistic regression of its influencing factors. Whilst the results of the former indicated that there are two latent classes, respectively, defined as ‘high death anxiety type’ (Han 65.20%; Tibetan 30.30%) and ‘low death anxiety type’ (Han 34.80%; Tibetan 69.70%), the latter demonstrated that compared with the ‘low death anxiety type’, the occurrence ratio of the ‘high death anxiety type’ was 47.00 and 34.04 percentage points higher with each increase in age. Furthermore, the stress and anxiety of Han and Tibetan college students were found to constitute factors that affect death anxiety. More specifically, the death anxiety of Tibetan college students was determined to be deeply influenced by a belief in the afterlife.

This study focuses on the psychological capital of medical staff, including medical students, and aims to explore the current status of psychological capital among medical staff and its impact on career development through a literature review. A literature search was conducted using keywords such as "medical staff" and "psychological capital," as well as "medical students" and "psychological capital" in databases including WOS, PubMed, Scopus, and CNKI. A total of 106 articles were retrieved, and after applying exclusion criteria, 22 English articles and 37 Chinese articles were included in the review. The findings of this study indicate that the majority of the research reviewed was empirical in nature. Psychological capital was measured using psychological capital scales, and its relationship with other variables, such as job satisfaction and perceived organizational support, was examined. The results consistently suggest that psychological capital plays a critical role in the career development of medical staff, particularly in areas such as academic performance, employment, and social support. Moreover, it was observed that the Positive Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PPQ-26) was widely used in Chinese literature, while the Psychological Capital Questionnaire (PCQ-24) was more commonly used in English literature. These scales provided researchers with a valuable tool for measuring psychological capital among medical staff and assessing its impact on various aspects of their career development.

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