RÉSUMÉ
Objective Through the visual analysis of the literature about the psychological distress in core journals of the Web of Science database for improving the quality of life of clinical patients and providing the reference for formulating targeted nursing measures. Methods CiteSpace V information visualization software was used to visualize and analyze 854 articles on psychological distress in the field of nursing from January 1,2008 to December 31,2017 in core journals of the Web of Science database, and draw knowledge graph about research hotspots and research frontier. Results In the recent decade, the number of psychological distress research in the field of nursing in SCI has generally risen; the research focuses on the key words of depression, stress, breast cancer, anxiety and so on;the United States issued the highest volume of documents, mainland China ranked fifth, China Taiwan ranked seventh in core journals of the Web of Science database. Conclusion Chinese research on psychological distress in the field of nursing is still lagging behind western developed countries, and nursing staff in China should work hard.