Week 30: Part 2 Stress

Learning about stress was somewhat very timely for us during this stressful period of revision. The three models of stress all had their strengths and weaknesses in describing stress, as stress is down to one’s perceptions (another link to health perceptions!).

I feel as budding pharmacists we are taught in a way that pharmacological intervention is the first instinct in our consideration of potential treatments, partly influenced by the fast technologies we enjoy in the day and age when we want an instant ‘fix’ for everything. 

I was interested to look at in the current non-pharmacological interventions available to help with stress. I looked at the MOODJUICE self-help leaflet and compared to the two mediation apps Headspace and Smiling Mind. I wondered if we can corporate these into community pharmacy setting to other parts of promoting public health too. As more and more people are using devices and apps like Fitbit to monitor their physical fitness, there is a potential to apply this in terms of mental health as well. In fact Headspace also markets itself the ‘gym for your brain’. There is a good potential for raising awareness of looking after one’s mental health and there has already been some successes in similar apps like the Change4Life ‘Couch to 5K running’ app. Community pharmacies are local health advice hubs are in a good place to recommend these relatively low-cost non-pharmacological interventions. There is limited evidence in the overall efficacy of these apps but community pharmacies could still contribute by acting as hubs to run clinical trials on these apps.