pharmacists & depression?

[cara]

i've been told by various people that pharmacists tend to get depressed. does anyone know exactly what this is supposed to mean?

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[Sinderella]

I have heard the exact same thing. I also heard there is a high suicide rate among pharmacists. I have been seriously thinking of entering pharmacy as a profession but now I don't know that it is such a good idea. Everyone I know, including myself, who has ever worked in a pharmacy notices how the pharmacist always seems stressed out and doesn't seem to like his/her job. Does anyone know why this is so? Are there some settings that are less stressful and depressing?

 

[Dr JPH]

Retail pharmacy can be an incredibly stressful job. If you don't feel you are cut out for this there are always other areas of pharmacy:

- hospital
- clinical
- research
- marketing
- teaching


And many more.

A PharmD degree is quite flexible in what you can do. The pay is vastly different in different areas, mind you. Retail is often referred to as the "golden handcuffs". No matter how bad you want to leave, $90,000 keeps you there.

 

[LVPharm]

No doubt, retail can be very stressful, but it depends on where you work. I've been to high volume, somewhat stressful Rite Aids near some of our local hospitals, but I've also interned at a Target that rarely had more than 100 scripts per day. Stressful? If you define that as spending several hours out of your shift reading a book or a magazine with your tech, maybe. The pharmacists were happy, rarely overwhelmed, and never dreaded coming to work.

 

[michelleca4]

I hear that rumor for various professions, like dentistry and medicine. I'm taking a enviornmental psychology class and this is what I learned about stress:

Stress is only if the individual perceives them to be negative. Physiological stress is when enviornmental demands exceed the body's capacity to cope with those demands. Psychological stress is environmental demands exceed the individual's percieved capacity to cope with those demands.

My advice, you'll find which environment that fits you best when you do your research and gain experience during rotations. I worked in retail for almost 2 years, I am still satisfied with my job even though it can be stressful at times.

 

[rxforlife2004]

cara,

I am not sure if you mean "depressed" in a way of getting bored or frustrated with the profession, or the stress level. Sure pharmacy is a career with a lot of stress: from crunching customers, physicians, nurses, etc.. But any career has its own stress. As of depression, I heard this is true. Maybe some pharmacist makes a big mistake in despensing a prescription, and ends up with dramatical outcome. This can make him/her depressed for sure...

 

[SteveL]

I haven't heard/seen of anything first hand, but i can believe that that might be true. In my case, our pharmacy manager is as happy as can be and as nice as the day is long and I'm very blessed to be able to work with her. On the other hand, I have another pharmacist who just wants to work part time and be able to spend time with her kids...she can't because we need her so badly (need the pharm-power). In the end, she puts in about an av. of 43 hours a week...not quite part time.

Oh yea, not that I'm saying that the job has anything to do with it, but both of our pharmacists have incredibly high pulse rates, BP levels, and both are on Ace/thiazid combo-drugs . We know because we make a point of checking a couple times a week on our BP machine