Working in mental health pharmacy

Many of our members find that working in mental health is a very rewarding career option.

For further reading about the role of pharmacy staff in mental health, you may find these two Pharmaceutical Journal article of interest:

Challenging the stigma

The Pharmaceutical Journal16 NOV 2017, By Julia Robinson

Pharmacists’ role in mental health is wide ranging and spans different sectors and settings. However, pharmacists often lack confidence in this area. More hands-on experience early in a pharmacist’s training could help build confidence and raise awareness of the specialty as a possible career path.

Approximately 1 in 4 people in the UK will experience a mental health problem this year, from generalised anxiety and depression to bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders.

People with severe mental illness are likely to die, on average, 10 years earlier than the rest of the UK population. Despite the massive toll mental health conditions take on society, for years their treatment has been isolated from physical healthcare.

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How pharmacist Nikki Holmes helps mental health patients on their journey from high secure services to recovery

The Pharmaceutical Journal 27 NOV 2017, By 

Nikki Holmes is head of pharmacy for forensic services at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, as well as immediate past president of the College of Mental Health Pharmacy. Here she talks to Julia Robinson about forensic mental health, how she entered the field and why she could never go back to “normal” pharmacy.

When Nikki Holmes qualified from Nottingham University as a pharmacist in 1993, working in forensic mental health was not an obvious career option. “In those days there wasn’t much in the way of mental health trusts and we didn’t have the number of specialist mental health pharmacists we do now,” she says.

Her first exposure to mental health pharmacy was during her preregistration year working in a mental health inpatient unit. Immediately, Holmes fell in love with the specialty. “[In comparison to other specialties] I liked the way of working and how treatment wasn’t so clear cut. We weren’t just following protocols, we worked collaboratively and we thought about the patient.”

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