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After 20 years of dispensing medications as a practising community pharmacist, Deena Ashoorian was very familiar with the communication gap between health care professionals and their patients.

"I was particularly interested in the patients with mental health problems, the side effects of their medications and the fact that there didn't seem to be a dialogue about the medicines," Assistant Professor Ashoorian said.

She left community pharmacy practice and has been teaching at UWA and doing research in this area for her PhD. And this month, she won the Pharmaceutical Society's of Australia's (WA Branch) Innovator Pharmacist Award for 2014.

One of her PhD supervisors, Professor Rhonda Clifford , said A/Professor Ashoorian was "capable of thinking outside the box to develop new methods and services aimed at improving patient care."

"She is leading the way for future health care professionals in the area of mental health communication," Professor Clifford said. Deena's other UWA supervisors, Clinical Professor Rowan Davidson (Inner City Mental Health Clinic) and Professor Danny Rock (North Metropolitan Health Service Mental Health) agree.

A/Professor Ashoorian said many mental health medications had unwanted side effects. "Sometimes, these side effects can be as bad as the illness they are supposed to treat. So many patients become non-adherent to their medications, their problems return and they are back in hospital or in the system again and often they don't communicate with anybody these unwanted effects."

She has developed a tool for mental health patients to easily record their experiences with medications and their side effects.  It was tested on more than 200 consumers in five mental health clinics and a metropolitan hospital.

"We are still analysing the trial results but the patients are so excited about it.  They say it is empowering," A/Professor Ashoorian said.

"Some of the side effects might not seem of much consequence to practitioners, but they can have a major effect on the patient.  For example, profuse sweating might seem to the practitioner a small price to pay for easing a mental health issue.

"But one woman told me that she can't go for job interviews and doesn't have any social life because the sweating is so embarrassing.

"Sexual dysfunction is another unwanted effect that might be embarrassing to communicate to a practitioner. But it can have huge consequences on a patient's relationships."

The tool will be developed into a colourful, inviting, easy to use form for patients to fill in and hand to their physicians.  "It is often easier to put things in writing than to verbalise them," A/Professor Ashoorian said.

She is also embedding programs into the Master of Pharmacy curriculum to educate students about mental illness and to get rid of the stigma about mental illness that she has found exists among pharmacists as much as among the general public.

A/Professor Ashoorian recently trained as a Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) instructor and said she believed UWA was the first Pharmacy program in Australia to offer MHFA training to all their students.

It is a unique and extremely successful program that is also delivered by UWA's manager of health promotion, Tricia Wylde , in the UWA Medical Centre.

A/Professor Ashoorian acknowledged the support of the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (WA branch), the Mental Healh Commission and the Richmond Fellowship.