Death attitudes and Chinese college students’ mental health: A latent profile analysis

AbstractAbstractDeath attitudes can have significant impacts on individuals' mental health. The present study used a person-centered approach to identify 588 Chinese college students' profiles of death attitudes (i.e., fear of death, death avoidance, neutral acceptance, escape acceptance, and approach acceptance), as well as their associations with socio-demographic factors and mental health outcomes. Latent profile analysis identified five subgroups of students: healthy (28.8%), acceptant (11.7%), indifferent (43.5%), paradoxical (10.7%), and avoidant (5.3%). The healthy profile had the most favorable mental health outcomes, whereas the paradoxical profile had the least favorable mental health outcomes. Moreover, women and students from better-resourced universities were more likely to report adaptive patterns of death attitudes. Our findings demonstrated the advantages of using a person-centered approach to achieve a more nuanced understanding of Chinese college students' death attitudes in relation to their mental health. The findings can inform death-related education and mental health interventions for college students. AcknowledgmentsWe thank all our participants for participating in this study.Disclosure statementThe authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.Data availabilityAccess to the data for this study can be requested by emailing the corresponding author.Ethical approvalEthical approval for this study was obtained from the ethics committee of the School of Education, Taiyuan Normal University on March 21, 2021.Informed consentInformed consent was obtained from all participants in this study.Additional informationFundingThis study was supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (Grant No. 21YJCZH103).