Depressed male inmates can now use video links to chat with female wardens, who heave been trained to become the majority of psychotherapists in China's prisons.
  
According to ministry of justice sources, jails in more than 10 provinces or municipalities, have female wardens giving psychotherapy to male inmates, who previously got few chances to meet the opposite sex or receive professional psychological counseling.
 
China has approximately 300,000 prison staff for its 1.5 million inmates. Though females make up roughly 20 percent, most of them are in secretarial positions, banned from taking care of male inmates.
  
Things began to change when Chinese prisons started to offer psychological treatment three years ago, said Wang Bao'an with the provincial prison administration bureau in east China's Shandong Province.
  
He said 80 percent of the province's 29 prisons now have female wardens as psychological counselors able to provide services by video-link chatting devices when inmates in other provinces could only reach their counselors through telephone.
  
The inmates rarely want to talk to male wardens, yet open up easily before female counselors, Wang said, adding that life behind bars has made quite a few inmates uneasy mentally.
  
China has very few psychotherapists, even for the general public, experts said, and prisons are inclined to train their own staff into professionals instead of hiring somebody from outside.
  
Wang said the 152 female wardens working as psychotherapists in Shandong's prisons all earned themselves a certificate to provide professional counseling. But we need more, Wang said, we are trying to assign at least one professional counselor for every 200 inmates.
  
According to the Hubei Prison Society in central China, over 90 percent of the 153 prison psychotherapists are women. Over the past year, they have prevented 133 cases of mental crisis, including a few suicide attempts.
  
The society's survey last year found that more than 72 percent of inmates held in Hubei Province said they preferred to have their mental problems resolved through on-line chatting and 69 percent said they felt refreshed after talking with female wardens.
  
Women are unassuming, easy to talk to, and more capable of defusing conflicts, and they could manage the jail staff as well as men, if not better, said Vivien Stern, a  senior research fellow at University of London at the ongoing prison management forum held at the coastal city of Qingdao in east China.
  
About 120 local prison wardens, Chinese and foreign law experts attended the four-day forum.
  
Hu Shaowen, vice-president of the society, said among the mental problems of male inmates, over 25 percent were caused by broken love, marriage crises, and problems in the family.
  
Another 18 percent were caused by worries over reintegration upon release, he said, and some 17 percent were resultant from frustration with prison management.
  
Noticing the need to maintain inmate's mental health, many prisons in China's affluent regions have given inmates sandbags, gloves, and rubber-men to vent their anger.
  
And in most prisons, the inmates have music room where they can play rock and roll. The women's prison in Shandong also set up a special room where, the warders said, female inmates can speak out their frustration without being humiliated.

(Xinhua News Agency April 22, 2005)