Why are we doing this study?

This study is trying to find out how to support the health and wellbeing of adults with ongoing long-term health problems. It is important to find out if a new and different way of providing support to people is better than the care usually provided.

The way that people feel can affect many parts of their life. Feeling low is often linked to other things like sleeping badly, not wanting to see people, having little or no motivation to do things, to name a few. Many people have to deal with long-term health problems that make doing the things they used to do increasingly difficult. For example, not being able to move about as easily can lead to loss of independence and feelings of being isolated and lonely. Things like this can affect how people feel and can sometimes lead to people feeling down or unhappy.

We are trying to learn more about how community pharmacies can offer support to help people nip such problems in the bud. We think community pharmacies, who see many people with long-term health problems, may be a good place to offer support to people to help them with these feelings. We have designed a form of support, called Pharmacy Support, which we are looking at in the CHEMIST study.