5016 health
From Studyplace
Previous Discussion Other Routes to Adult Participation--Next Discussion Education into Development what is the role of advertisement in educating the public about such matters as smoking? cholesterol? erectile disfunction? The issue of advertising and marketing has been on my mind in a lot of ways for quite a while in this course and it has started to crystallize now that we've read Stratton's work on Hard of Hearing. The heavy role and control of the State in Sweden can be said to be taken up, in different ways, by the role of the Market in the U.S. First and foremost, on issues like cholesterol and ED and others, advertisers make sure the public KNOWS ABOUT THE PROBLEM. I'm reminded of things like "restless leg syndrome" (you may have it and you didn't even know it!) The role of marketing plays into the interaction with the medical world in other ways. Admonitions like "Make sure you ask your doctor about ....x" have the patient supposedly acting on knowledge when going to the doctor. The patient who heeds the advice inserts him/herself into the medical world. The power of being marketed to is arguably stronger than the "convincing" that an institution might have to do. Imagine the scene: "I saw a commercial about this hearing aid and it's supposed to be the best!" It's well known that giving a false choice of two options to the one being marketed to gives the illusion of freedom. There is less of a need for strong institutions to educate when a drug company or other technology company educates for you through the TV. If anyone knows of any articles on how people have been convinced they have mental problems--through marketing or otherwise--please send them my way. I'm interested in the (self) diagnosis of depression and the marketing of anti-depressive drugs.
I agree that there is too much advertising on the part of the drug companies. I feel like any time I go to the doctor's office there are pens and posters all over with the name of the drug and the drug company attached to it. Even posters that are supposed to be educational are trying to sell you something. I think that the internet contributes to a lot of this self-diagnosis as well. Any time you don't feel well you can just log onto your computer and google the symptoms and make a diagnosis about your supposed illness. I think this directly filters into our schools where teachers are also making diagnoses regarding students. Any student that can't sit for long periods of time immediately becomes labeled(not necessarily officially, but through the school discourse) as ADHD. When in all actuality we probably need to take a closer look at some of our schooling practices.
I did find an article titled, "Pushing Drugs: How medical marketing influences doctors and patients" by Ben Harder (2005). It is a short article highlighting a study done where actors went into doctors offices describing symptoms of depression and other actors went in describing less serious symptoms. One thing they did find was that those individuals who went in describing an advertisement they had seen were more likely to receive a prescription than those that didn't (Harder, 2005). In addition, the article also talks about the amount of money spent on direct face to face marketing in doctor's offices. $5.3 billion was spent on face to face marketing and $16.4 billion on free samples in 2003 (Harder, 2005). I can say that I have benefitted from the drug companies free samples and that is a nice free advantage when you can get your hands on it. I also think it was really interesting that this article said that direct to consumer advertising was not allowed in Europe and minimal advertising in Canada (Harder, 2005). Therefore, a huge amount of effort and money is spent in the U.S because of these huge limitations in other parts of the world.
In the article a book is mentioned that I thought might be an interesting read. Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine by John D. Abramson and another book I came across was The Creation of Psychopharmacology by David Healy.
Dana McCormick
Thanks for the references, Dana. Scott
