Community pharmacists are more likely to take men more seriously when they are perceived to be at risk of suicide, a new study has revealed.
Researchers at the University of Western Australia found that when pharmacists were presented with “hypothetical scenarios” involving men and women “displaying signs of suicidality”, their responses differed depending on the patient’s gender.
The study said pharmacists “routinely felt empathy for female patients expressing suicidality” and “went on to offer them a mix of both helpful and harmful support”.
But while they were “less likely to respond emotionally to male patients”, they were “more likely to take the issue seriously” and therefore “offer them more helpful and less harmful mental health support”, it added.
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The research also found that responses to women were “the same whether the patient was familiar to them or not”, whereas pharmacists “were more helpful to familiar, compared to unfamiliar, male patients”.
Lead study author Dr Joseph Carpini said helpful support included “non-judgemental listening, open discussion, coming up with a safety plan and identifying appropriate support systems”.
Harmful help included “reinforcing stigma such as by using shame and guilt to deter suicide, avoiding the issue and blaming the patient”, he added.
“Insidiously subtle”
Dr Carpini said that overall, “it appears that when it comes to helping male patients who are perceived to be at risk of suicide, pharmacists offer the highest quality help to men who are more familiar to them”.
“By contrast, support given to female patients was more a function of their felt empathy - a response which is associated with both beneficial and potentially harmful support,” he added.
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He noted that the findings “reinforced previous research showing gender bias in healthcare across the board”, which “can lead to discrimination and impact patient outcomes”.
“Our findings show this bias can be even more insidiously subtle and complex than previously thought,” he said.
And he added that the different responses “reflected subtle but persistent gender-based stereotypes about how men and women should behave and express - or not express - their emotions”.
Important implications
Study co-author Dr Deena Ashoorian said the findings had “important implications for training and practice” given “high suicide rates and the fact pharmacists were often frontline responders due to their ready accessibility to the community”.
“Pharmacists play a critical role in the community as the first point of contact for many people in crisis, and as the gatekeepers to potentially lethal means of suicide,” she added.
She said training pharmacists “to recognise their potential unconscious biases and the various ways in which such biases manifest can help them respond more effectively and better support community health”.
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It comes after the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said this month that it is “strengthening” dependency and addiction warnings for drugs commonly used to treat pain, anxiety and insomnia.
And it follows the regulator announcing it will revise the wording in patient leaflets for antidepressant medicines to give “greater clarity on the risk of suicidal behaviour”.
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