Thinking Outside the Medicine Cabinet: A Comparative Content Analysis of Direct-to-Consumer Advertisements for Prescription Drug Treatments

Abstract

This study content analyzed online direct-to-consumer advertisements (DTCA) for prescription drug treatments to explore whether ads for prescription treatments for psychiatric conditions, which are commonly untreated, differ from other drug advertisements. Coded variables included the presence of interactive technological components, use of promotional incentives, and the social contexts portrayed in images shown on each site. Statistical analysis revealed ads for psychiatric medications contained fewer interactive website features, financial incentives, and calls to action than other types of prescription drug advertisements. Implications for health communication researchers are discussed.

Building trust and empowering informed decisions: effects of risk disclosure and call to action on young adults’ responses to dietary supplement advertising

“…Call to action refers to content that prompts recipients to take certain actions (Oltra et al, 2021). As a common technique used in DTC drug advertising, a call to action such as "ask your health-care provider" or "see your doctor" mobilizes viewers to consult their health-care providers about the advertised drug (McKeever, 2014), but its role in dietary supplement advertising has been overlooked. Even though a lot of attention has been paid to the effects of call to action on people's intentions to perform instructed behaviors, less research has examined the impact of call to action in changing people's perceptions and attitudes.…”

Substance‐Induced Psychosis: Clinical‐Racial Subjectivities and Capital in Diagnostic Apartheid

“…Separately, pharmaceutical marketing to the insured middle class has come under anthropological and sociological scrutiny. Chronic diseases, maintenance medications, psychotropics, and lifestyle drugs are lucrative markets, so an ever‐expanding base of everyday diagnoses for mainstream American consumers must be carefully planted, tended, and harvested, and stigma in diagnosis, which is toxic to drug sales, leads advertisers to systematic euphemism and altered strategies in campaigns for psychotropic medications (Foster ; McKeever ). It is within this market logic of drugs for life (Dumit ) that, through a sleight of hand, psychosis among middle‐class consumers becomes drug‐induced psychosis or becomes depression or mania with psychotic features, and antipsychotics become mood stabilizers, adjuvants for antidepressants, or part of a maintenance regimen in addiction treatment.…”