The doctor–patient relationship (DPR) is essential in the process of medical consultations and treatments. Poor DPR may lead to poor medical outcomes, medical violence against doctors, and a negative perception of the healthcare system. Little is known about how DPR is affected during this novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This cross-sectional study aimed to explore the DPR during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were 1,903 participants in China (95% response rate) who were recruited during the pandemic online via convenience and snowball sampling. Several questionnaires were used to evaluate participants' attitudes toward DPR, including the Patient–Doctor Relationship Questionnaire (PDRQ-9), Chinese Wake Forest Physician Trust Scale (C-WFPTS), a survey on medical violence against doctors, factors that affect and improve DPR, and general trust in medical services. Results revealed that DPR improved, and doctor–patient trust increased compared to participants' retrospective attitude before the pandemic. In addition, patients' violence against doctors decreased during the pandemic. Better doctor–patient trust and lower violence toward doctors are related to better DPR. Furthermore, we found that the main factors that could improve DPR include communication between doctors and patients, medical technology and services, and medical knowledge for patients. This study helped to better understand DPR in China, which may contribute to future health policies and medical practices in order to improve DPR and doctor–patient trust.

Jhanas are profound states of mind achieved through advanced meditation, offering valuable insights into the nature of consciousness and tools to enhance well-being. Yet, its neurophenomenology remains limited due to methodological difficulties and the rarity of advanced meditation practitioners. We conducted a highly exploratory study to investigate the neurophenomenology of jhanas in an intensively sampled adept meditator case study (4 hr 7T fMRI collected in 27 sessions) who performed jhana meditation and rated specific aspects of experience immediately thereafter. Linear mixed models and correlations were used to examine relations among brain activity and jhana phenomenology. We identified distinctive patterns of brain activity in specific cortical, subcortical, brainstem, and cerebellar regions associated with jhana. Furthermore, we observed correlations between brain activity and phenomenological qualities of attention, jhanic qualities, and narrative processing, highlighting the distinct nature of jhanas compared to non-meditative states. Our study presents the most rigorous evidence yet that jhana practice deconstructs consciousness, offering unique insights into consciousness and significant implications for mental health and well-being.

Meditation has been integral to human culture for millennia, deeply rooted in various spiritual and contemplative traditions. While the field of contemplative science has made significant steps toward understanding the effects of meditation on health and well-being, there has been little study of advanced meditative states, including those achieved through intense concentration and absorption. We refer to these types of states as advanced concentrative absorption meditation (ACAM), characterized by absorption with the meditation object leading to states of heightened attention, clarity, energy, effortlessness, and bliss. This review focuses on a type of ACAM known as jhana (ACAM-J) due to its well-documented history, systematic practice approach, recurring phenomenological themes, and growing popularity among contemplative scientists and more generally in media and society. ACAM-J encompasses eight layers of deep concentration, awareness, and internal experiences. Here, we describe the phenomenology of ACAM-J and present evidence from phenomenological and neuroscientific studies that highlight their potential applications in contemplative practices, psychological sciences, and therapeutics. We additionally propose theoretical ACAM-J frameworks grounded in current cognitive neuroscientific understanding of meditation and ancient contemplative traditions. We aim to stimulate further research on ACAM more broadly, encompassing advanced meditation including meditative development and meditative endpoints. Studying advanced meditation including ACAM, and specific practices such as ACAM-J, can potentially revolutionize our understanding of consciousness and applications for mental health.

Background: There have been few studies on the stigma associated with mental disorders among non-mental health professionals in general hospitals in China. This study seeks to explore mental health-related stigma and the desire for social distance among non-mental health professionals in general hospitals in Hunan Province in China. Methods: The study was carried out with 1123 non-mental health professionals in six general hospitals in Hunan Province by using a questionnaire with a case vignette describing either schizophrenia, depression, or generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). Questions were asked about the attitudes of participants and other people towards individuals with mental disorders and the willingness to come into contact with them. Results: The people described in the vignette were considered dangerous by 84.4% of participants for schizophrenia, 72.0% of participants for depression, and 63.1% of participants for GAD. Besides being dangerous, people with schizophrenia were perceived as unpredictable and as the least suitable for voting for as a politician or employing. Around 50% of participants believed the problems described in the vignette were due to personal weakness. Over 70% of the non-mental health professionals were not willing to have the people described in the vignette marry into their family. The participants had gained their mental health-related knowledge mainly through the media, mostly from newspapers. Conclusions: The current study found a significant stigma towards individuals with mental disorders and a desire for social distance from such people among non-mental health professionals in general hospitals in Hunan Province. Anti-stigma interventions should focus on addressing non-mental health professionals' beliefs on dangerousness and unpredictability.

Structural and task-based functional studies associate emotion reading with frontotemporal brain networks, though it remains unclear whether functional connectivity (FC) alone predicts emotion reading ability. The predominantly frontotemporal salience and semantic appraisal (SAN) networks are selectively impacted in neurodegenerative disease syndromes like behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) and semantic-variant primary progressive aphasia (svPPA). Accurate emotion identification diminishes in some of these patients, but studies investigating the source of this symptom in patients have predominantly examined structural rather than functional brain changes. Thus, we investigated the impact of altered connectivity on their emotion reading. One-hundred-eighty-five participants (26 bvFTD, 21 svPPA, 24 non-fluent variant PPA, 24 progressive supranuclear palsy, 49 Alzheimer’s disease, 41 neurologically healthy older controls) underwent task-free fMRI, and completed the Emotion Evaluation subtest of The Awareness of Social Inference Test (TASIT-EET), watching videos and selecting labels for actors’ emotions. As expected, patients averaged significantly worse on emotion reading, but with wide inter-individual variability. Across all groups, lower mean FC in the SAN, but not other ICNs, predicted worse TASIT-EET performance. Node-pair analysis revealed that emotion identification was predicted by FC between 1) right anterior temporal lobe (RaTL) and right anterior orbitofrontal (OFC), 2) RaTL and right posterior OFC, and 3) left basolateral amygdala and left posterior OFC. Emotion reading test performance predicts FC in specific SAN regions mediating socioemotional semantics, personalized evaluations, and salience-driven attention, highlighting the value of emotion testing in clinical and research settings to index neural circuit dysfunction in patients with neurodegeneration and other neurologic disorders.

Study objective: To investigate the association between family cancer caregivers’ unmet daily needs and emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress across their care recipient’s treatment phases. Method: A cross-sectional study design and self-report questionnaires were used. Family caregivers (N = 237) of cancer patients in ambulatory cancer clinics were recruited from May to December 2017, and completed a sociodemographic and medical questionnaire, the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale and Needs Assessment of Family Caregivers-Cancer Scale. Hierarchical linear regression was conducted to examine the influence of each predictor (sociodemographic variables, unmet personal care and role management needs, cancer treatment phase) on the Depression Anxiety Stress Scale total score, depression subscale, anxiety subscale, and the stress subscale. Results: Family caregivers’ unmet daily activity needs, in particular higher unmet personal care needs, during the intermediate phase (6–9 months), were significantly associated (ps9 months), the significant association of unmet personal care needs was with overall distress (b = 5.91), anxiety (b = 1.97) and stress (b = 2.53). After completing treatment, unmet role management needs were only significantly associated with stress (b = -1.59). Caregivers’ higher depression was also associated with greater unmet role management needs, regardless of treatment phases. Conclusions: Intermediate and chronic cancer treatment phases were identified as having greatest effect on caregivers’ unmet daily activity needs and emotions. Unmet personal care needs played the major effect on overall negative emotional states in the intermediate treatment phase and stress in the chronic treatment phase. Close attention to caregivers needs in intermediate and chronic treatment phases, would be highly beneficial in alleviating negative emotional disturbances.