LIFELINE Shanghai, a new psychological support hotline for expatriates, marked two months in service on May 18, doubling its operating hours from 28 to 56 hours a week and preparing to train 20 new volunteer counselors in June.

The helpline has fielded nearly 70 calls to date, dispensing quick logistical advice or tackling serious issues like marital or job problems, abuse or death, in conversations that sometimes top two hours.

Callers span all ages, and, most surprising to founding director Victoria Hine, nearly half have been men.

"We'd expected, rightly or wrongly, that 99 per cent would be female," Hine said.

These so-called "trailing spouses" who accompany their partners on job postings abroad can commonly end up feeling alienated and lost. While their partners work in dynamic jobs surrounded by educated colleagues, they are often isolated at home, lavished with luxuries like a maid and driver that only compound alienation with guilt.

According to Hine, a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey in fact shows that 45 per cent of expat postings fail - 96 per cent of the time because the accompanying spouse or family is unhappy.

Not only does the language barrier complicate counselling for foreigners, cultural differences colour notions of mental health. Treatment remains a comparatively new phenomenon in China, where studies have shown patients more likely to "somatize" depressive symptoms, exhibiting them physically, rather than verbally.

The Shanghai expatriate community, meanwhile, includes only two registered Western psychologists, Hine says.

Lifeline Shanghai was designed to address that void. First conceived by colleagues at the medical assistance company, International SOS, it was intended to help distressed expats before their situations became physically threatening.

"Why have the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff?" Hine recalls thinking. "We said, 'Let's set something up that will help people before they get into that kind of situation'."

Accredited by the South Africa-based counselling network Lifeline International, Lifeline Shanghai was modeled on Tokyo English Life Line (TELL), an expatriate helpline in Japan that has grown since the late 1970s to include 50 offices and field more than 10,000 calls a year.

In Shanghai, 28 volunteer counselors man the phones in shifts, bound to complete confidentiality. All are expats themselves - and many are "trailing spouses" with a history of volunteer work, in which they find that same sense of community callers seek. "This is our fourth posting," explained a counselor manning the hotline last Tuesday. "I've always tried to do volunteer work. This is when it's most important to give back to the community."

Twenty new volunteers begin the Lifeline's requisite three-day training programme in June. Co-ordinated by Dutch psychotherapist Janna Van Duyn, training focuses on developing "active listening" skills through role-playing, and includes informational seminars on Chinese culture, Shanghai resources, and special expat needs.

"This is a small community," Van Duyn says. "You meet people and make friends quickly because everyone is in the same situation, but you don't want to be a burden.

"At home, you know people really well. You can trust them. But this is a little different. People are always coming and going," she says. "It's important to have someone you can talk to anonymously."

Hotline: 6279-8990

12:00pm-8:00pm, Monday-Sunday

To become a volunteer, e-mail: info@lifelinesshanghai.com.