Community pharmacy personel’s knowledge, attitude and practice towards provision of mental health care.

Abstract

Background: Mental disease burden is increasing globally, and a substantial shortage of mental health professionals remains. Community pharmacy personnel can improve population mental health outcomes to bridge the mental health care gap. However, there is paucity of data on community pharmacy personnel’s provision of mental health care. Objective: To assess the current provision of mental health care by community pharmacy personnel to people with mental illness in Uganda, including confidence and comfort in knowledge in providing mental health care, attitudes towards mental illness and regular practices. Methods: This was a cross sectional study in which literature guided questionnaire development. The questionnaire was also informed by the Framework of core Mental Health Competences for all pharmacy professionals and other relevant literature and administered to community pharmacists in Kawempe Division. Logistic regression was used to identify the predictors of personnel practices. Results: In the interviews, community pharmacy personnel described adopting a precautionary attitude and perceived their role as a dispensing one. In total, 80 community pharmacy personnel completed the questionnaire, and 72.5% reported performing at least five counselling practices. Logistic regression showed that community pharmacy personnel who performed a higher number of practices (>=5) were younger, received continuing education on mental health care in the last two years, and had higher confidence levels. Conclusion: Community pharmacy personnel performed basic dispensing practices and reported discomfort during encounters with patients with mental illness. Training on patient-centred communication skills and psychiatric therapeutics is needed to improve pharmacist-delivered services, alongside increased collaboration with other providers and services.