Community pharmacists are more likely to show empathy towards women but to take men more seriously when they are perceived to be at risk of suicide, according to new research that echoes wider gender bias across the healthcare system.
The study, led by The University of Western Australia, presented 291 Australian pharmacists with hypothetical scenarios involving male and female patients displaying signs of suicidality, then assessed their responses and the kind of mental health support they offered the patients.
The pharmacists routinely felt empathy for female patients expressing suicidality and went on to offer them a mix of both helpful and harmful support.
By contrast, they were less likely to respond emotionally to male patients but more likely to take the issue seriously and to in turn offer them more helpful and less harmful mental health support.
Whereas for women the response was the same whether the patient was familiar to them or not, pharmacists were more helpful to familiar, compared to unfamiliar, male patients.
Lead author Dr Joseph Carpini, from the UWA Business School, said helpful, or 'recommended' support included non-judgemental listening, open discussion, coming up with a safety plan, and identifying appropriate support systems.
Harmful, or 'unrecommended' help included reinforcing stigma such as by using shame and guilt to deter suicide, avoiding the issue, and blaming the patient.
"We found the quality of help offered to patients varied depending on whether they were male or female," Dr Carpini said.
"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."
Dr Carpini said the study's findings reinforced previous research showing gender bias in healthcare across the board – a problem that 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.
"The different responses we saw reflected subtle but persistent gender-based stereotypes about how men and women should behave and express – or not express – their emotions."
Co-author Dr Deena Ashoorian, from the UWA School of Health and Clinical Sciences, 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," Dr Ashoorian said.
"We know that nearly four in 10 Australian pharmacists have encountered someone they believed was at risk of suicide in the past year, as per our previous research.
"Alarmingly though, pharmacists don't intervene at all in about 25 per cent of these cases – a gap that could mean the difference between life and death.
"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.
"More effective training can help to increase recommended support behaviours, while reducing unrecommended support behaviours."
The paper, published in Current Psychology, can be read here.
