Healthy Skepticism Library item: 679

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Hansen FJ, Osborne D.
Portrayal of women and elderly patients in psychotropic drug advertisements
Women & Therapy 1995; 16:129-141

Abstract:

Differences in pattens of prescribing psychotropic drugs for men and women have been well documented, especially in antidepressants adn anxiolytics. One explanation offered is that physicians are influenced by gender stereotyping in pharmaceutical drug advertisements. It is argued that if drug ads display disproportionately more women than men, or if they portray women only as helpless, depressed, and incompetent, cultural stereotypes are reinforced, so that physicians may be likely to diagnose and treat women differently from men. To determine whether gender bias exists in recent drug advertisements, a frequency analysis was performed of all psychotropic drug advertisements appearing in American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP) and American Family Physician (AFP) between q1986 and 1989. Since females are depressed twice as commonly as males in the general population, it was expected that twice as many antidepressant ads would depict females. The study found that the actual ratio of females to males in antidepressant ads was 5:1 in AJP and 10:0 in AFP. Other analyses were performed comparing the two journals. As expected, women and the elderly were overrepresented in adsd in AFP compared to the psychiatry journal. These patterns in recent psychotropic drug advertisements are discussed in relation to gender stereotypes in society at large. It is proposed that overrepresentation of females in certain categories of psychotropic drug advertising may serve to reinforce cultural stereotypes in physicians, so that they may diagnose and treat women differently in sex biased ways.

Keywords:
*analytic survey United States journal advertisements images in ads women elderly sexism psychotropic drugs EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS IMAGES IN PROMOTION: ELDERLY IMAGES IN PROMOTION: WOMEN PROMOTION IN SPECIFIC THERAPEUTIC AREAS: PSYCHIATRIC DISEASES