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Background: In order to know the structure of the violence to medical staff and its personality correlates, we designed two studies in Chinese university students and the relatives of patients consulting comprehensive hospitals. Methods: First, we invited 457 participants to answer a 68-item matrix measuring the violence to medical staff, and their answers were dealt with both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Second, 118 participants aged 18-20 years old (Younger) and 118 aged 26-45 (Older) were tested with the VMSQ, the Parker Personality Measure, and the Plutchik - van Praag Depression Inventory. Results: A structure-validated Violence to Medical Staff Questionnaire (VMSQ) was developed with 34 items under seven scales. The Older scored significantly higher than the Younger did on VMSQ Violence terminator, Physical abuse initiator, and Verbal abuse initiator, but lower on Sympathy to victims and Knowledge of violence, and on Schizotypal, Avoidant, and Dependent personality disorder functioning styles. In Younger, Paranoid predicted the Verbal abuse initiator, Schizotypal the Physical abuse initiator, Antisocial the Violence terminator, Borderline the Sympathy to victims, Avoidant the Physical abuse initiator, and Dependent the Sympathy to victims; in Older, Passive- Aggressive the Physical abuse initiator, Narcissistic the Dissatisfaction with service, and Obsessive-Compulsive the Sympathy to victims. Conclusion: We developed a structure-validated questionnaire to measure the violence, and found that personality features were associated with different violence structures in two different age groups, which might help to prevent medical staff from violence in medical settings.

Background: Traditional Chinese culture, such as the paternalism, male dominance and collectivism, contribute to normal and disordered personality traits, and the influence might be traced back to an ancient epoch. As a compendium of Chinese culture, the novel, A Dream of Red Mansions (up to first 80 chapters) written in the 18th century, might be a vector of these traces. Methods: We selected and voted on the personality-descriptive terms (adjective)/phrases, and sentences/ paragraphs in the novel, and compared them with the dimensional classification criteria of Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder-Version 5. Results: Some characters in the novel, Jia Baoyu, Wang Xifeng, Lin Daiyu, Xue Baochai, Xue Pan, Jia Yucun, Concubine Zhao, Jia Rui, Miaoyu, and Jia Jing, with their impairments in personality functioning and pathological traits, might be diagnosed as antisocial, borderline, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, or schizotypal personality disorder, or a trait-specified. In each character, the personality disorders or traits had their family, societal and religious (Taoism or Buddhism) connections. Conclusion: Our study indicates that Chinese culture has contributed to personality disorders or traits at least from 18th century on, and has disclosed the disadvantages of Taoism, Buddhism, and hierarchy, male dominance and collectivism under the influence of Confucianism in the development of personality disorder. Our findings might provide treatment hints for personality disorders at the root of culture, for patients in China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and other neighboring countries in Asia, who have been emerged from the Chinese culture.

The meaningful words reported by the healthy people when listening to the Deutsch word illusion were correlated with the normal personality traits. Whether the phenomenon would be more pronounced in patients with personality disorders, especially the cluster A types remains unknown. We therefore invited 11 patients with paranoid, 34 schizoid, and 13 schizotypal personality disorders, and 116 healthy volunteers, to report the Chinese words when they were listening to the Deutsch “High-Low” and “Harvey” word illusions. The paranoid and schizoid personality disorder patients reported more meaningful Chinese words than the healthy volunteers did when they were listening to the “Harvey” word illusion, and more meaningful Chinese words which were corresponding to the DSM-5 pathological personality traits than the healthy volunteers did. The study had demonstrated that when interpreting the illusion stimuli, patients with cluster A personality disorders would mobilize more cognitive processes relating to their personality-specific traits.