Healthy Skepticism Library item: 3972

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

Neill JR.
A social history of psychotropic drug advertisements.
Soc Sci Med 1989; 28:(4):333-8

Abstract:

Psychotropic drug advertising for psychiatrists serves many purposes beyond its ostensible function of providing technical information. Medical advertising research has tended almost exclusively to use “conspiracy theory”-that is, they embrace the notion that one group (the advertisers) manipulates the other (the physicians). An examination of psychiatric journals from 1955 to 1980 shows the situation to be more complex. Such advertising seems to serve an orienting and therapeutic function for the physician, mirroring and supporting his professional identity or image. Such a view is in conformation with more recent research on nonmedical advertising.

Keywords:
*analysis/psychotropic drugs/journal advertisements/psychiatrists & psychiatry/EVALUATION OF PROMOTION: JOURNAL ADVERTISEMENTS/PROMOTION IN SPECIFIC THERAPEUTIC AREAS: PSYCHIATRIC DISEASES Advertising/history* History, 20th Century Humans Psychiatry/history* Psychotropic Drugs/history* United States