Recruiting people with severe mental illness through community pharmacies:real-world experiences from a UK study

BACKGROUND: Proxy recruitment of patient participants through community pharmacies may be a valuable strategy to maximise participation. This paper focuses on the feasibility of such a recruitment strategy for research involving people who experience severe mental illness. METHODS: Fifty-three community pharmacies, including 50 'Research Ready' pharmacies, were asked to recruit people with severe mental illness for participation in research. Pharmacists were asked to provide participant information to anyone presenting a prescription meeting specific criteria. RESULTS: Thirteen recruitment sites (25%) (from 4 distinct organisations) were approved to recruit patient participants. Eighty-five percent (n = 11) failed to recruit any potential participants. CONCLUSIONS: Proxy recruitment of people with severe mental illness through community pharmacies was challenging with challenges in both pharmacy- and participant-recruitment. Further investigation into supporting community pharmacists' engagement with recruiting patients with SMI as research participants is required

Review of Community Pharmacy Staff Educational Needs for Supporting Mental Health Consumers and Carers

Development of a mental health education package for community pharmacy staff should be informed by mental health consumers/carers’ needs, expectations and experiences, and staff knowledge, skills and attitudes. This review (1) explored research on community pharmacy practice and service provision for mental health consumers/carers, and (2) identified validated methods for assessing staff knowledge, skills and attitudes about mental illness to inform the development of a training questionnaire. A literature scan using key words knowledge, skills, attitudes, and beliefs combined with community pharmacy, pharmacist, and pharmacy support staff, and mental illness, depression, anxiety was conducted. A small number of studies were found that used reliable methods to assess pharmacists’ training needs regarding mental illness and treatment options. There was little published specifically in relation to depression and anxiety in community pharmacy practice. No studies assessed the training needs of pharmacy support staff. A systematic analysis of pharmacy staff learning needs is warranted

Effectiveness of contact-based education for reducing mental illness-related stigma in pharmacy students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>A strategy for reducing mental illness-related stigma in health-profession students is to include contact-based sessions in their educational curricula. In such sessions students are able to interact socially with a person that has a mental illness. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in a multi-centre study of pharmacy students.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study was a randomized controlled trial conducted at three sites. Because it was necessary that all students receive the contact-based sessions, the students were randomized either to an early or late intervention, with the late intervention group not having participated in the contact-based education at the time when the primary outcome was assessed. The primary outcome, stigma, was assessed using an attitudes scale called the Opening Minds Survey for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We initially confirmed that outcomes were homogeneous across study centres, centre by group interaction, p = 0.76. The results were pooled across the three study centres. A significant reduction in stigma was observed in association with the contact-based sessions (mean change 4.3 versus 1.5, t=2.1, p=0.04). The effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.45. A similar reduction was seen in the control group when they later received the intervention.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Contact-based education is an effective method of reducing stigma during pharmacy education. These results add to a growing literature confirming the effectiveness of contact-based strategies for stigma reduction in health profession trainees.</p