The project, on the "integration of mental health care within a primary health care setting", is led by Otago University medical graduate Dr Sunny Collings.
A former GP, Dr Collings is now a social psychiatrist who is co-director of the Social Psychiatry and Population Mental Health Research Unit at the university's Wellington campus.
The study has been funded for 18 months by the District Health Board Research Fund, which was established by New Zealand's 21 district health boards to commission research that addresses key knowledge gaps for the boards.
The fund is administered by the Health Research Council.
Dr Collings and another investigator in the mental health project, Prof Tony Dowell, said they were both excited to be involved in the research, which continues earlier work in this field.
Prof Dowell heads the department of primary healthcare and general practice at the university's Wellington campus.
The project focuses on a "Toolkit for Primary Mental Health Care Development" and aims to research and develop an evidence-based, sustainable system framework for mental health care, developing a series of best practice "tool kits" to support the organisations involved.
The research will look at what various organisations, including district health boards, Primary Health Organisations, and non-governmental organisations need to do to provide mental health care, ranging from mental health promotion to treatment of disorders in the primary care setting.
Mr Philip Gandar and David Rees, both of Synergia Ltd, an Auckland-based firm involved health system analysis, are also participating in the research.
Researchers said that general practitioners had long been providing mental health care but this was difficult to accommodate within the usual 10 to 15-minute consultation times.
Dr Collings said that in "times of rising unemployment and economic threat" it was important for people to know they could access good primary mental health care services when they were under "a lot of psychological stress."
Four district health boards are expected to be involved in the research, which will also involve the South Island, but final details are yet to be decided.
In another is a series of recent grants from the health board fund, Otago University researchers have also been granted $103,030 to undertake a multi-centre analysis of factors affecting the implementation of the national diabetes retinal screening grading system and referral guidelines.
The researchers are Dr Edward Hutchins, a Teaching Fellow, and Associate Prof Gordon Sanderson, both of the Otago University ophthalmology section, Senior Research Fellow Dr Kirsten Coppell, Dr Ainsley Morris, of the university's Christchurch campus, and Dr Anmar Abdul-Rahman, an Otago graduate and consulting ophthalmic surgeon at Middlemore Hospital, Auckland.
Clinical Associate Prof Patrick Manning, of the university's Dunedin campus, who is also an endocrinologist at the Otago District Health Board, has also received an $11,500 grant to investigate whether a virtual specialist diabetes clinic improves linkages with primary care and reduces the demand on secondary care diabetes specialist services.
Dr Jeremy Krebs, an endrocrinologist with a special interest in obesity and diabetes, at the Capital and Coast District Health Board, Wellington, also gained funding to undertake two studies.
Dr Krebs, who is also a clinical senior lecturer at the university's Wellington campus, gained $102,855 for a study focusing on preventing diabetes in people with acute coronary syndrome and hyperglycaemia.
The other study, involving $133,772, is devoted to group-based self-management education for patients/whanau with type 2 diabetes.