Bryan Gomez is a first-year PharmD candidate at The University of Georgia College of Pharmacy.
This article includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Globally, nearly 1 million people die by suicide each year, and for college-aged young adults, suicide is the second-leading cause of death, surpassing cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other chronic conditions.1 With steady incremental rises in the number of completed suicides and suicide attempts over the past 2 decades—along with recognition of suicide as a preventable public health problem with actionable solutions by CDC and WHO—there has never been a better or more urgent time to mobilize support for evidence-based suicide prevention efforts.2
As student pharmacists, here’s where we can start in our advocacy.
Bringing suicide prevention education to campus
Across the United States, only Washington state requires that pharmacists receive suicide prevention training.3 Despite pharmacists being uniquely well-situated in communities to identify individuals at risk of suicide and suicide prevention trainings being regularly recognized as effective in reducing deaths by suicide, only 4–8% of pharmacists feel they have the necessary training to engage with or assist suicidal patients.4–6 Thus, there’s a demonstrated need for increased suicide prevention training, and as student pharmacists we have a unique opportunity to call upon our colleges of pharmacy to incorporate suicide prevention into our education.
Excitingly, numerous nationally recognized, high-quality, and validated training programs—such as Mental Health First Aid and Question, Persuade, Refer Suicide Prevention Training for Pharmacists—already exist and are easy and cost-effective to implement.3 In advocating for such training to be adopted at your school, consider talking to your college’s curriculum committee, faculty member(s) in charge of curriculum design and assessment, or professors who regularly teach skills-related courses. Opportunities to incorporate suicide prevention and intervention training may exist:
- Alongside regularly hosted CPR and other emergency-response trainings your school already offers
- Within a skills lab or course on patient counseling and communication
- As a simulated IPPE wherein student pharmacists practice responding to suicidal patients
- Within an integrated pharmacotherapy course alongside education on neurologic and psychiatric interventions
Incorporate suicide prevention into patient care projects
Substance use disorders (SUDs) are positively correlated with suicide, because being under the influence of a substance increases the likelihood that a suicidal person attempts or completes suicide and because intentional poisoning remains a commonly utilized method of suicide.2 Accordingly, opportunities exist to bring suicide prevention education into both APhA–ASP Operation Substance Use Disorders and Operation OTC Medicine Safety projects. Consider working with your chapters to increase education on proper medication storage and disposal, SUD treatment and pharmacist involvement, and/or overdose reversal agents.
Go local, go big!
Ready to start making connections with local policymakers? Consider starting your advocacy efforts by getting a proclamation issued to recognize National Suicide Prevention Week or, more broadly, the importance of suicide prevention work and the role pharmacists play in preventing suicide.
While proclamations are not official policy or legislation—they’re typically used to raise awareness on an issue—they’re an easy way to begin conversations with local leadership and get important issues on their radar. Because they’re not official legislation, the barrier to entry for official proclamations is low and the process is usually accessible. Get in contact with your local mayor’s office, city commissioners, or city council to inquire about your locality’s process. That’s me in the picture with a proclamation issued by Mayor Kelly-Girtz of Athens–Clarke County in recognition of National Suicide Prevention Week!
References
1. CDC. Facts about suicide. Suicide Prevention. Atlanta: CDC. Available at: www.cdc.gov/suicide/facts/index.html. Accessed December 16, 2022.
2. Bachmann S. Epidemiology of suicide and the psychiatric perspective. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018;15(7):1425.
3. Carpenter DM, Lavigne JE, Roberts CA, et al. A review of suicide prevention programs and training policies for pharmacists. JAPhA. 2018;58(5):522–9.
4. Kassir H, Eaton H, Ferguson M, et al. Role of the pharmacist in suicide prevention: Primely positioned to intervene. J Pharm Pract Res. 2019;49(6):567–9.
5. Stone D, Holland K, Bartholow B, et al. Preventing Suicide: A Technical Package of Policies, Programs, and Practices. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control; 2017.
6. Cates ME, Cochran Hodges JR, Woolley TW. Pharmacists' attitudes, interest, and perceived skills regarding suicide prevention. Ment Health Clin. 2019;9(1):30–5.