This op-ed is by Larry Selkow, RPh, FCPhA, president of the Southern California Public Health Association and chair of the APHA Pharmacy Section's Policy Committee.

Suicide remains a serious public health problem. Nearly 50,000 people took their own lives in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some professions show higher rates of suicide, one being the pharmacy occupation.

The suicides of two pharmacists this summer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania — both of whom worked at separate CVS pharmacies — shocked the local community and launched a wider discussion about pharmacists and suicide on social media and through local news outlets. 

Being a community pharmacist for over 40 years, I was drawn to learn more about pharmacists and suicide.

The general public is not aware of the stress levels faced by community pharmacists who work within retail chain stores. Not only is workload high, but oftentimes pharmacists in retail chains must meet performance metrics each month. They might have to fill a certain number of prescriptions and provide a certain number of vaccinations each day. Also, many pharmacies are understaffed. All of this can compromise accuracy and safety.

Following the tragic deaths of the Lancaster pharmacists, the Pennsylvania Pharmacists Association released a statement acknowledging the heavy workloads and stress that can come with the occupation.

In 2022, the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association published a study that looked at pharmacist suicides using data from CDC’s National Violent Death Reporting System from 2003 to 2018. Researchers found more than 213,000 overall suicide deaths during that period, with 316 of them among pharmacists. That comes out to 20 per 100,000 people. By comparison, suicide rates for the general public during the 15-year study period were 12 per 100,000 people.

Overall, firearms were the most common means of death. But pharmacists diverged with the general public in that the second most-common means of death for the occupation was drug overdose, such as by opioids, benzodiazepines, antidepressants and sedatives, the study said. This may be attributable to the access pharmacists have to these drugs on the job.

While national pharmacist organizations such as the American Pharmacists Association have looked into the stress level of community pharmacists, it is up to the individual state boards of pharmacy to address the problem further. Only when this happens can the situation improve to an acceptable level. 

Photo by Zorazhuang, courtesy iStockphoto