Jerry McKee, BCPP, MS, PharmD
The mission statement of the CPNP Foundation proclaims that “The CPNP Foundation envisions a world in which individuals with psychiatric and neurologic disorders receive optimal treatment, live free of stigma, and achieve their full potential. Our mission focuses on the needs of individuals living with psychiatric and neurologic disorders, their families, and health professionals in general practice to further evidence-based treatment.”
As one step toward realizing our mission, the Foundation has placed a priority upon enhancing our understanding of the issues around stigma and social distancing among community pharmacists as a beginning point to make inroads in decreasing stigma among all healthcare providers. In order to achieve this goal, we are collaborating with Dr. Vincent Giannetti and colleagues at the Duquesne University Mylan School of Pharmacy to explore community pharmacists’ knowledge of and attitudes toward mental illness, comfort and confidence in dealing with persons with mental illness, and the services they provide to this population via a comprehensive national survey. The survey results and accompanying interpretive narrative will be the first published research assessing, from a national perspective, the biases of community pharmacists regarding persons with mental illness. This work is intended as a foundation to further encourage pharmacists to keep an open mind and continually educate themselves and others about the truth surrounding mental illnesses, their causes, and their manifestations.
It is well known that people with mental illnesses and certain neurologic disorders are treated differently than those without these disorders, even by healthcare professionals. These biases can serve as barriers to patients receiving optimal care, can hinder them from realizing their potential, and can be detrimental to their sense of well-being. It is essential that everyone, including healthcare professionals, think about their own biases and make certain that our preconceived notions are in sync with research findings. Further, identifying ways to minimize these barriers are key to the long-term objective of improving access to care for persons with mental illness. This work is one step to making this a reality.
The Foundation is pleased to announce that the survey results are in, have been aggregated and analyzed, and a corresponding manuscript is in the late stages of development by the CPNP Foundation workgroup and Dr. Gianetti’s team, with publication in a top tier journal as the next goal. It is anticipated that the publication of this work will be useful to the Foundation, other researchers, pharmacy educators, and professional pharmacy organizations in developing programs/initiatives to reduce stigma and its consequences among this group of healthcare providers and ideally, improving access to care for our patients.
While results are embargoed during this phase of the manuscript development, the CPNP Foundation workgroup is pleased with the findings and believes this will be a seminal work in the area of assessing pharmacists’ perceptions regarding barriers to counseling patients and pharmacists’ beliefs about patients with mental illness. Equally important is the discussion regarding mechanisms to overcome these barriers to success. The goal of dissemination of the eventual published manuscript it to improve the comfort and confidence that community pharmacists have in supporting persons with mental illness when they assist them in their practice settings.