Nearly 100 people have attended six ''Rural Life: Keeping the Balance'' workshops in Otago and Southland since the programme to address rural mental health was launched earlier this year.
Developed by Southern Primary Health Organisation's health promotion and projects co-ordinator Katie Jahnke, of Dunedin, in association with Lindsay Wright, of Wendonside, who is also the programme's facilitator and the Southland Rural Support Trust co-ordinator, it is designed to raise awareness of stress and anxiety, and in particular acknowledge the stressors of living and working in a rural environment.
''Our programme was developed with farmers and is delivered by people who work in and are from rural communities,'' Ms Jahnke said.
''It focuses on the grass roots level of mental health, including mental health problems like depression, which can arise when we are unable to manage those stresses in an effective way or get adequate support.
''The programme increases confidence for people to talk about it and encouraging help seeking and health promoting behaviour.
''So far, we have delivered the workshop to almost 100 rural people at six workshops including one Young Farmers club. ''Feedback and evaluation has been extremely positive with great engagement from rural communities,'' she said. Ms Jahnke said a recent press release from Federated Farmers highlighted the concerning number of suicides among farmers. ''We are working to address this at a local level with our Rural Life programme.
''We want to encourage people to incorporate mental health into everyday conversations. It's about normalising it. ''We give them some really easy and practical ways to start or introduce mental health into a conversation. ''John Kirwan has done some great work in helping to reduce stigma around mental health so we're just trying to build on that.
''Participants from our programme have reported a significant increase in awareness of some of the warning signs of stress and mental health problems and increased confidence to talk to someone when they're concerned.''
Mr Wright said the programme filled a gap and met a need.
They had run one workshop for a Young Farmers' club, changing the format from about two hours to half an hour to fit in with their meeting structure.
''That went amazingly well,'' Mr Wright said.
''They were very engaged.
''Now that we have a shorter version that we know will work, we can look at going to other Young Farmers clubs.
''The shorter version may able to be slotted into field days.
''This kind of thing would be interesting at rural conferences.''
He said the workshop format could be adapted to fit the needs of a specific group.
As farmers were busy at this time of year, they were now focusing on running workshops for the agribusiness sector, he said.
The workshops are free and open to anyone in the rural sector.
BY YVONNE O'HARA