Subjective well‐being is a crucial index measuring the mental health of medical staffs, and it is necessary to examine the changes in subjective well‐being (SWB) level of Chinese medical staffs with time. A cross‐temporal meta‐analysis was performed using papers that measured the SWB level of Chinese medical staffs between 2004 and 2020. Moreover, a time‐lag analysis was conducted to define whether the macro‐social indicators can explain the changes in SWB. A total of 47 papers were included in the final sample. The results revealed that score of SWB was significantly negatively correlated with the year. Score of SWB was significantly associated with six social indicators of economic condition (the residents' consumption level, housing prices, and old‐age dependency ratio), social connectedness (the divorce rate and the urbanization level), and overall threat (the crime rate), which indicated that social change may account for the decline of Chinese medical staffs' SWB level. Our study revealed a decreasing trend of Chinese medical staffs' SWB level over time, which was associated with macro‐social changes in diverse areas. In addition, combined with the corresponding macro‐social indicators, a three‐dimensional theoretical framework is proposed to explain the SWB for medical staffs as a group.

To explore the changes in the mental health levels of Chinese physical education college students, the present study conducted a cross-temporal meta-analysis of 43 papers that adopted the Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90) from 1995 to 2019. The results showed that the average scores of the seven SCL-90 factors were negatively correlated with the year of data collection. The socioeconomic indicators (GDP, per capita GDP and household consumption level) were significantly negatively correlated with the eight dimension scores of the SCL-90 (except for phobic anxiety). The mean effect sizes of the sex differences in the seven dimension scores (except depression and phobic anxiety) were lower than the small effect size. In conclusion, Chinese physical education college students’ mental health levels have increased in the past 25 years. This phenomenon may be related to Chinese socioeconomic growth, the implementation of national sports policies, and the provision of mental health education for college students. In addition, although the increasing trend in the mental health level of female students was more obvious, there were no significant sex differences.