We have furthered our commitment to mental health services in Canterbury over the past year through increased funding to provide more sessions, reaching more people.

Our partners - Pegasus Health, Piki Te Ora, Partnership Health Community Workers and Waipuna Trust - have worked together to grow mental healths ervices, establish additional project leadership and better report activity.

A part-time psychiatrist has also been putin place to support primary mental health teams, and we're working more closely with the Rural Canterbury PHO, which runs its own mental health service for its communities.

With a rise in mental health needs after the earthquakes, extra funding has been put into more brief intervention counselling and extended consultations via general practices. These services will continue, given that the mental health impacts of the earthquakes will carry on well into the future.