Napier Family Centre's new Post Natal Adjustment Programme has supported more than 115 women across Hawke's Bay with post-natal depression (PND).
The programme, contracted through Health Hawke's Bay, was piloted in 2010 and is now offered in Hastings and Napier each school term.
Kathy Egan, Napier Family Centre's counselling services manager, said the group work run by counsellors was a new concept for helping mothers with post-nataldepression.
"Up to 15 per cent of women can experience post-natal depression," Mrs Egan said. "Women can feel huge pressure to live up to the expectations of how a mother should be coping and her own expectation of how it will be when baby arrives.
"When the reality includes perhaps a birth that was different to her belief or the feelings afterwards aren't as she had hoped, post-natal depression can result."
