Pharmacists’ Role in Mental Health Care: Exploring the Current State and Factors Impacting Service Provision
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pharmacists can have an essential role in providing care for patients with mental illness\nand addressing the significant and growing mental health care needs. There are gaps in the\nunderstanding of the current extent of Saskatchewan pharmacists’ involvement in caring for\npatients with mental illness and of their readiness to effectively provide this care. This study\ndescribes the current practices of Saskatchewan pharmacists in providing care to individuals with\nmental illness and assesses factors that may impact these practices.\n\nA cross-sectional, electronic survey was emailed to pharmacists in Saskatchewan,\nCanada. Pharmacists were recruited through the provincial advocacy bodies and were eligible if\ntheir current practice included direct patient care in any setting. Pharmacists were asked about\ntheir current extent of and attitudes toward providing specific clinical services for mental health\npatients. Other questions were asked to assess attitudes, beliefs, and potential barriers related to\nmental health care provision. Data was collected in Qualtrics XM and analyzed using descriptive\nstatistics, Chi-Square tests for associations, and content analysis for free-text responses.\n\nOne hundred forty-six pharmacists responded to the survey (response rate 9.1%). Fewer\nthan 20% of respondents are providing listed clinical services to most or all patients with mental\nillness, except for providing basic medication education (61%). However, most agree it is a\npharmacist’s role to provide these services, especially basic education (98%), monitoring therapy\n(94%), and performing comprehensive medication management (91%). Many pharmacists feel\nmotivated to provide these services, and to a much higher degree than they currently are. The\nfactors most frequently selected as having the greatest impact on service provision were\ninsufficient knowledge (27%), competing priorities (19%), and inadequate staffing (15%). The\nmajority of pharmacists had positive attitudes about providing mental health patient care and\nagree that pharmacists should have more of an active role.\n\nSaskatchewan pharmacists are well-positioned to enhance the care of patients with\nmental illness, although several barriers impede their ability to regularly provide clinical\nservices. Further research and targeted funding should be prioritized to support pharmacists in\nproviding this care and bridging the gaps to address the mental health crisis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".