Exposing the Mythmakers (original) (raw)
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Marketing Madness: Mental Health in the Mid-’90s
Comparative American Studies An International Journal, 2021
How do we solve a problem like Elizabeth? This might well have been the title of Elizabeth Wurtzel's 'depression memoir,' Prozac Nation (1994); or rather, it might have been the title if the book had been a memoir, rather than a piece of first-person gonzo-style reporting from the field of chemical imbalance. This reading forms the basis of a deeper reconsideration of Wurtzel's position in the popular imagination as the 'voice of a generation.' In the public imagination, mid-'90s culture in America is inextricably linked with irony, depression, and apathy. It may be a Canadian writer who is credited with popularising the term 'Generation X' (Douglas Coupland, in 1991), but the blankness and indeterminacy of its signification seemed to speak directly for a generation approaching adulthood in the nexus between the conservative Republicanism of the Reagan and (first) Bush years and the ostensible liberalism of the saxophone-sound tracked Clinton era. With her keen wit and canny publisher, Elizabeth Wurtzel capitalised on the 'representative' function of her writing, which is nowhere clearer than in the epilogue that gives Prozac Nation its title.
Merchandising Madness: Pills, Promises, and Better Living Through Chemistry
The Journal of Popular Culture, 2004
WAS introduced to ease the suffering of the mentally ill and those who cared for them. Since then, pharmaceutical companies have laid the fruits of science and technology before us through advertising text and images that explicitly or implicitly promise some form of psychological ''better living through chemistry.'' 1 Given our seeming preoccupation with one-stop shopping, ultrafast communication, and the quick fix, there appears to be a wholesale cultural acceptance of this promise as truth-so much so that of the billions of dollars spent annually on prescription drugs over the last several years-those designed to quickly and effectively combat depression, anxiety, and psychosis-consistently rank in the top ten (''Drug Monitor Report''; ''US Physicians''; ''Top 10 Therapeutic''; ''Latest 12 Month''). This dynamic rise in psychotropic drug spending is due in large part to the combined success of the advertising, pharmaceutical, and psychiatry industries in commodifying mental illness. Commodification in this context refers to the blurring of boundaries between discomforts of daily living and psychiatric symptomatology to the point that both can be equally and efficiently remedied through mass-marketed products (i.e., psychotropic medication). And in our free-market, capital-driven society, advertising is the engine that shapes and runs this marketing. Further, as competition for market shares increases in this highly competitive and lucrative arena, ''communication forms that abbreviate and truncate meaning systems'' into familiar signs and symbols-that
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2016
This article investigates the redefinition of depression that took place in the early 1970s. Well before the introduction of the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this rather rare and severe psychiatric pathology hitherto treated in asylums was transformed into a widespread mild mood disorder to be handled by general practitioners. Basing itself on the archives of the Swiss firm Ciba-Geigy, the article investigates the role of the pharmaceutical industry in organizing this shift, with particular attention paid to research and scientific marketing. By analyzing the interplay between the firm, elite psychiatrists specializing in the study of depression, and general practitioners, the article argues that the collective construction of the market for first-generation antidepressants triggered two realignments: first, it bracketed etiological issues with multiple classifications in favor of a unified symptom-oriented approach to diagnosis and treatment; second, it radically weakened the differentiation between antidepressants, neuroleptics, and tranquilizers. The specific construction of masked depression shows how, in the German-speaking context, issues of ambulatory care such as recognition, classification, and treatment of atypical or mild forms of depression were reshaped to meet commercial as well as professional needs.
Deep Pharma: Psychiatry, Anthropology, and Pharmaceutical Detox Cult Med Psychiatry
Psychiatric medication, or psychotropics, are increasingly prescribed for people of all ages by both psychiatry and primary care doctors for a multitude of mental health and/or behavioral disorders, creating a sharp rise in polypharmacy (i.e., multiple medications). This paper explores the clinical reality of modern psychotropy at the level of the prescribing doctor and clinical exchanges with patients. Part I, Geographies of High Prescribing, documents the types of factors (pharmaceutical-promotional, historical, cultural, etc.) that can shape specific psychotropic landscapes. Ethnographic attention is focused on high prescribing in Japan in the 1990s and more recently in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the US. These examples help to identify factors that have converged over time to produce specific kinds of branded psychotropic profiles in specific locales. Part II, Pharmaceutical Detox, explores a new kind of clinical work being carried out by pharmaceutically conscious doctors, which reduces the number of medications being prescribed to patients while re-diagnosing their mental illnesses. A highprescribing psychiatrist in southeast Wisconsin is highlighted to illustrate a kind of med-checking taking place at the level of individual patients. These various examples and cases call for a renewed emphasis by anthropology to critically examine the ''total efficacies'' of modern pharmaceuticals and to continue to disaggregate mental illness categories in the Boasian tradition. This type of detox will require a holistic approach, incorporating emergent fields such as neuroanthropology and other kinds of creative collaborations.
Getting to Yes: Corporate Power and the Creation of a Psychopharmaceutical Blockbuster
In this paper, I analyze documentary evidence from a pharmaceutical company’s strategic marketing campaign to expand the sale of an antipsychotic medication beyond its conventional market. I focus on the role of the managerial function known as channel marketing, the task of which is to minimize friction, achieve coordination and add value in the distribution of the company’s products. However, the path to achieving these objectives is challenged because members of the marketing channel, or intermediaries, may not be contractual members of the channel; in fact they may have widely divergent goals or may even be hostile to the manufacturer’s efforts at control. This can be construed to be the case for physicians and others who are in the pharmaceutical manufacturer’s distribution channel but not of it. Their views and actions must somehow be brought into alignment with the manufacturer’s goals. This paper seeks to show part of the process from the manufacturer’s strategic standpoint, in which potential dissenters are incorporated into the pharmaceutical company distribution channel. The routinization of this incorporation results in the diminishment of psychiatry’s professional autonomy by means of what is—paradoxically to them, but not to a student of marketing—a competitive threat. The paper concludes with a discussion of corporate power.
I'd rather not take Prozac': stigma and commodification in antidepressant consumer narratives
Health:, 2008
a b s t r a c t This article explores the idea that narrative is the primary vehicle through which antidepressant consumers negotiate their sense of identity and reality. Antidepressant consumers represent a unique consumer culture because of the stigma that society attaches to mental illness. Recent media attention, including direct to consumer (DTC) advertising, appears to decrease the stigma surrounding antidepressant use while at the same time commodifying and branding them for mass consumption. Antidepressant consumers must negotiate the threat of stigma and the threat of commodifi cation through the process of constructing narratives. Exploring the narrative process of identity negotiation reveals how the interconnected cultural processes of stigma and commodifi cation are undergoing historical shifts. Among these shifts are the intensifi cation of branding and an expansion of consumer culture. Implications for health promotion and further research are discussed. k e y w o r d s antidepressant branding; commodifi cation; consumer culture; narrative; stigma a d d r e s s Regina Smardon, The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture,
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Drug Companies, and the Internet
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 2009
This dynamic, Zuger (2007) suggested, is one that can be seen as either a "problematic tangle of moral compromise or a triumphant health-promoting collaboration." The pharmaceutical industry exerts its influence at many different levels within the medical profession. At an individual level, links between professionals and the industry are proliferating and include funding of professional conferences and continuing medical education events (Kempner, 2006). High prescribers receive cash rewards and gifts. Psychiatrists receive payment for consultancy fees, for sitting on advisory boards or boards of directors, and by holding equity in a company (Breggin, 2008; Moncrieff, 2003). Drug company influence in the health field occurs via advertising and, in New Zealand and the United States, through direct-to-consumer advertising. Direct-to-consumer advertising uses a variety of media, including television, newspapers, journals, educational pamphlets and campaigns, and, more recently, the Internet. Drug advertisements have long been a prominent feature of major psychiatric journals, and in most countries the Internet is used as an additional global marketing tool for medications (Woodlock, 2005). A study of 1,600 general practitioners (family doctors) in New Zealand found that 90% had experienced consultations that were generated by advertising, 68% felt these consultations were often unnecessary, and 40% said they had either started patients on advertised drugs or switched drugs at the patient's request even though they felt such drugs offered little benefit (Woodlock, 2005). Pharmaceutical companies fund research informed by the biomedical model of the etiology and pharmacological treatment of psychiatric disorders. Antonuccio, Danton, and McClanahan (2003) suggested that drug company funding of clinical research and drug trials enables companies to fund only those research projects that have a high likelihood of producing favorable results for their products. Drug companies may also terminate negative studies before the results are ready for publication (Antonuccio et al., 2003), and publication bias exists whereby only studies with outcomes favorable to the industry get published (Fava, 2004).
Co-opting psychiatry: the alliance between academic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry
Epidemiologia e psichiatria sociale
The editorial presents the arguments that an alliance between academic psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry is harmful through a critical review of the academic literature and media coverage of activities of the pharmaceutical industry. The industry and the psychiatric profession both gain advantages from promoting biomedical models of psychiatric disturbance and pharmacological treatment. This confluence of interests has lead to the exaggeration of the efficacy of psychiatric drugs and neglect of their adverse effects and has distorted psychiatric knowledge and practice. Academic psychiatry has helped the industry to colonise more and more areas of modern life in order to expand the market for psychotropic drugs. Persuading people to understand their problems as biological deficiencies obscures the social origin and context of distress and prevents people from seeking social or political solutions. Psychiatry has the power to challenge the dominance of the pharmaceutical indu...