Some senior officials have committed suicide due to mental illness in recent years. For instance, Wang Xiaoming, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing municipal government, committed suicide in May, and Zheng Xiaosong, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Macao, took his own life this month.

The list of officials losing the fight against mental illness is long, which calls for serious reflection on the problems that force them to take their own lives.

Leading cadres in poor mental health often show a number of symptoms, including depression, mania, insomnia and lack of willpower, even some physiological signs such as headache and chest congestion. Since such symptoms could disrupt the cadres' work and life, taking effective measures to improve their mental health has become an essential task for the central authorities.

Compared with other social groups, leading cadres observe more stringent institutional regulations. This means institutional factors greatly influence their mental health. So the key lies in strengthening and optimizing the regulatory and management system of cadres at all levels.

First, cadres applying for leading positions should be made to take a psychological test before being appointed. Those who fail the test should be excluded. Such a screening would offer some kind of protection to cadres, as people with mental illness are often too stressed to manage leading tasks.

Second, apart from the common requirements from cadres, humane, targeted and scientific multilevel indicators should be adopted to measure their performance in a more comprehensive way. The goal is to make the cadres feel that the institutions they work for care for them, which would lower their mental stress at work.

And a scientific mechanism for the cadres to take rest, and review their work and actions and adjust them accordingly should be established, so that the cadres with mental illness receive timely and sufficient psychological treatment.

The help from cadres' families, however, should not be ignored. Generally speaking, leading cadres tend to hide their real mental state and try not to show at work the mental ups and downs they are going through. Since they are more likely to open up and talk about psychological problems at home, the family members are normally the first to discern the symptoms of mental illness in them. Yet, despite being the first line of defense for the cadres, the family members may not be able to offer professional assistance and advice.

Nevertheless, love and care from family members can significantly lower a patient's uneasiness and help him or her to recover faster. Perhaps close and warm family ties could prevent people from developing mental illness in the first place.

Alarmingly, some cadres with mental illness are known to reject professional treatment, making the support of and help from the family especially important for their recovery.

A healthy working atmosphere is also important for improving leading cadres' mental health. Unharmonious relations with colleagues will certainly lead to stress and aggravate the cadres' mental illness, while healthy relations may help them to recover faster.

Moreover, thanks to the development of social media, the pressure on the leading cadres to interact with the public has increased immensely. And answering all sorts of queries of the public could be very stressful for the leading cadres.

Faced with a complicated working environment and demanding jobs, along with the huge public pressure, leading cadres with low psychological threshold could suffer a breakdown. On the other hand, a healthy and tolerant public environment could exert positive influence on the leading cadres' mental health.

Society is undergoing constant change, and the number of people with mental illness is increasing. Since leading cadres have been a major force behind deepening of reform and opening-up, their mental health is of utmost importance. So the authorities should attach greater importance to the issue and take timely and effective measures to help the leading cadres maintain a healthy mind.

The author is a professor at the Department of Culture and History, Party School of the CPC Central Committee.