With a quarter of us likely to experience a mental health problem this year, it’s a pressing topic of concern for UK Healthcare. Generalised anxiety, depression, bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders can affect anyone, regardless of their background, and in recent years mental health has become more prominent on the agendas of the UK government and the NHS.

Although they’re not always acknowledged, pharmacists are extremely well-placed to help with mental health problems. Specialist mental health pharmacists are trained to optimise treatments for individuals being cared for in mental health facilities, but community pharmacists regularly interact with individuals with mental health problems, as explained by Hemant Patel, the secretary of North-East London local pharmaceutical committee:

“In community pharmacy, we probably see more mental health patients and their carers than anywhere in the healthcare system. The hospitals deal with the severe cases - but those with mild-to-moderate anxiety or depression come to the community pharmacy for help.”

In fact, all pharmacists have the training to support people with mental illness. “People with severe mental illness are likely to die, on average, 10 years earlier than the rest of the UK population”. With the help of community pharmacists, people find it easier to access services that promote physical and oral health through encouraging exercise and providing smoking cessation services. In addition to signposting useful services, pharmacists are well-positioned to identify changes in behaviour and other early signs of mental health problems. By monitoring requests for over-the-counter medicines and identifying signs and symptoms during consultations, your local pharmacy team is ideally placed to identify a decline in wellbeing.

Pharmacy teams are still learning the best ways to support people with their mental health. Keith Ridge aims to upskill chief pharmacists in mental health:

“We need to look at changing peoples’ attitudes to mental health - whether that’s in community or in the acute trust. We’re very poor at talking to [mental health] patients in a meaningful way about their experiences [with their medications] - do they believe [the medications] work? Do they understand the reality of the medication - for example, for those with schizophrenia, the reality is that they will be on their medication for life. Mental health is more focused on listening and understanding - [pharmacists] need to engage with this and lead on it.”

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We’re still working on making sure the expertise and clinical knowledge of your community pharmacy is utilised, and mental health is just one avenue in which pharmacists can help. If you’d like to speak to a pharmacist, pop into your local pharmacy and ask for a private consultation.