Rural Community Pharmacy Approaches to Lethal Means Management for Suicide Prevention

Medications are common means of suicide. Rural areas have high suicide rates, greater proportions of older adults and veterans, and few providers. We assessed the implementation potential of community pharmacy interventions for lethal means management (LMM).

The feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness of 8 LMM interventions were assessed by pharmacists in seven southeastern states via an online survey. Descriptive statistics were calculated.

Pharmacists (N = 61) responded from 42 zip codes. The majority indicated that five (62.5%) interventions were very/extremely feasible, appropriate and acceptable. The greatest proportion rated medication therapy management (MTM) as very or extremely feasible, appropriate and acceptable (82%) followed by limiting prescription drug days' supplies (75.4%), blister packaging (68.9%), dispensing naloxone (62.3%), and suicide prevention training (59.0%). No pharmacies were currently distributing gun locks; however, some were already managing suicide risk with limited days' supply (31.7%), MTM (26.7%), naloxone distribution with every opioid dispensed (15.0%), monitoring patients for suicidal adverse events (16.7%), limits on sales or stock of non-prescription products (16.7%) or blister packaging (1.7%).

Pharmacists endorsed LMM interventions, and most were already offering the endorsed interventions but not for LMM.

The rural community pharmacists in this study believed several LMM services were highly feasible, acceptable and appropriate for use in preventing suicide.