Two programmes designed to help medical staff working with parents with mental illness will be launched in Whanganui soon.
Keeping Families and Children in Mind, and Let's Talk, both national health programmes, will focus on encouraging conversations that help children better understand what their parents are experiencing and, importantly, that they didn't cause their parents' illness.
The programmes will be rolled out in Whanganui this year and over the rest of the country in 2018-19.
Whanganui District Health Board children's mental health clinician Jo Heap said Keeping Families and Children in Mind was designed for clinicians working with parents who experienced mental illness.
The programme is focused on developing a family-sensitive approach that takes into consideration how children and young people are feeling about their parents' illness.
Let's Talk is a brief, easy-to-use, evidence-based method that trains professionals how to encourage discussion about parenting, well-being and the development of children who have parents or caregivers experiencing mental illness.
Let's Talk provides the clinician with practical tools for helping parents identify, understand and develop strategies tailored to their children's strengths and vulnerabilities.
Ms Heap said it was an approach that viewed the parent as the expert on their children.
"This is a stance that empowers the parent to reflect on their parenting in the context of the mental illness they experience," she said.