Health New Zealand wants to close an Auckland intensive mental health service

Consultation is underway over the closure of Segar House, which treats people with complex mental health disorders, chronic suicidal behaviours and self harm.

In the change document, it proposes to disestablish the programme, re-invest the resources into community mental health teams and redeploy staff.

Group Director of Operations Michael Shepherd says Segar House has a very low number of people accessing the programme.

He says this proposal wouldn't see any reduction to frontline staff and would result in more mental health services being available.