Officials' mental health a growing concern

An official from Liaoning Province was found dead in a river in Shenyang on September 21. Later police confirmed he committed suicide by drowning.

Officials' mental health a growing concern.[File photo]

Yuan Weiliang, 47-year-old, was chief of the Liaoning Rural Credit Union and diagnosed with depression two months before his death.

Yuan is not the first government official who has died of unnatural causes in recent several years. At least 21 have died from such causes since 2009, a China Daily report said, and most are believed to have killed themselves due to depression or stress.

"People suffering from depression often try to alleviate their own mental distress by creating physical pain," said Xu Yan, a psychology expert from Beijing Normal University. She mentioned an official from Hubei Province, Xie Yexin, who was found dead with 11 self-inflicted knife wounds on his body.

Although only a few officials have committed suicide, many more suffer from anxiety, depression, insomnia and sickliness.

According to the Psychiatric Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Jinan University, ten percent of the ward's patients are public servants, the highest proportion of any group.

Shi Zhanbiao, a mental health expert at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also found lots of government officials suffered from insomnia and obsessive-compulsive disorder and frequent paranoia.

A survey for government officials showed that five reasons contributed to their stress: heavy responsibility in their jobs, high expectation from the public, overbearing workloads, lack of promotion opportunity and witnessing corruption, Southern Weekly reported.

Officials respon! sible fo r handling demolition projects, citizen complaints, disciplinary inspections, auditing and medical supervision shouldered heaviest pressure as they had to face more of the undesirable elements of society as well as heavy corruption, the report said.

Xu Yan said the middle-level cadres showed worst mental heath conditions, and officials between the ages of 30 to 50 tended to have the most stress.

Work-related stress for officials, researchers found, is related to problems within the bureaucracy. "To ensure officials' mental health, we need an incorruptible political environment and let the system protect them," said Li Chengyan, an expert of Peking University.

Shi explained the reasons why officials hesitated to seek advice from mental health experts. He said one reason was a lack of understanding of the benefits of psychological counseling, and another was fear of 'losing face' if discovered by their peers. Many thought that seeking a counselor would cause them to be the brunt of jokes at work or be passed up for promotion. China's current deficiencies in privacy protection laws may contribute to this, he said.

Many officials have chosen to instead consult monks at Buddhist or Confucian temples for advice on mental health.

China's central and local governments have begun to express concern about this escalating problem. Many books concerning depression and work-related stress have been published, and many lectures have been held. Zhejiang Province recently began a pilot project to promote the healthy mental development of public servants.

The CPC Organization Department also attaches great importance to mental heath when evaluating cadres. However, most officials still hesitate to discuss their problems with others, and even make every effort to keep back the truth, which has worsened the situation.

A research conducted of about 92,000 public servants in 590 cities by people.com.cn in 2009 suggested that government officials commonly suffer physical and mental pr! oblems. The survey also showed that the officials' stress levels vary from place to place. Officials in big or costal cities, such as Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai, are much easier to suffer stress.

An unofficial study said China had about 10 million public servants by the end of 2008.