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Charity Pharmacist Support funded 700 counselling sessions in 2025, which represents a 59% increase in sessions compared with 439 funded the year before.
In its ‘Impact report 2025‘, published on 20 July 2026, the charity also noted that in 2025, referrals to counselling increased by 31% compared with 2024.
Counselling sessions are offered by phone, online or face-to-face and in languages including Urdu, Punjabi and Hindi.
Pharmacist Support also shared £25,000 in student bursaries and received a record 88 applications throughout the year, the report highlighted.
It also revealed that in 2025, 8,035 pharmacists signed up to the charity’s ACTNow campaign compared with the previous year — a 149% increase. ACTNow offers support to those taking part to improve their overall wellbeing.
In addition, in 2025, the charity distributed £171,438 in support grants for pharmacists, students and trainees in financial difficulty across 177 grants, while in 2024, it awarded £192,811 across 168 grants.
Commenting on the figures, Esther Sadler-Williams, chair of trustees at Pharmacist Support, said: “While we are encouraged that more people than ever reached out to us for support in 2025, the figures only tell part of the story.
“We are proud of what has been achieved, but the need for our work has never been clearer.
“We remain committed to ensuring every member of our pharmacy family knows they have somewhere to turn and can access the support they need, when they need it.”
Pharmacist Support was established in 1841 by the then Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain and became an independent charity in 2006. It exists to support pharmacists and their families, former pharmacists, trainee pharmacists and pharmacy students experiencing personal or financial difficulties.
Every year, Pharmacist Support and the Royal College of Pharmacy run a joint workforce wellbeing survey. In 2025, the workforce wellbeing survey was shared with pharmacy technicians for the first time.
According to the survey results, published in February 2025, over 6,500 respondents identified several additional factors that had a negative impact on their mental health and wellbeing, including inadequate staffing (70%), lack of work-life balance (49%), increased financial pressures (47%), lack of protected learning time (47%), lack of colleague or senior support (47%) and long working hours (34%).
During 2026, the charity’s impact report said it would consider into whether it would be possible to provide support to pharmacy technicians and how that support may look.
