This link has been bookmarked by 1 people . It was first bookmarked on 21 Mar 2007, by Jonathan Macagba.
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21 Mar 07
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Since, in a consumer society, we see ourselves as individuals and as free agents when we exercise consumer choice, it is not difficult for pharmaceutical companies and other privatized health-care deliverers to convince us that it is empowering to think of ourselves not as patients but as consumers.
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in a recent New York Times article: “For a sizable group of people in their 20's and 30's, deciding on their own what drugs to take—in particular, stimulants, antidepressants and other psychiatric medications—is becoming the norm. Confident of their abilities and often skeptical of psychiatrist's expertise, they choose to rely on their own research and each other's experience in treating problems like depression….A medical degree, in their view, is useful but not essential”
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“lifestyle marketing” has now extended to the promotion of many of the blockbuster “maintenance drugs” intended for daily, lifelong consumption, such as drugs for allergies, insomnia, and acid reflux.
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The crossover to curative medicine occurred with psychotropic drugs, which have a very wide range of active properties, thus granting the marketer latitude in reinterpreting their value back to the consumer. For example, one class of antidepressants, the specific serotonin reuptake inhibitors, is marketed for eight distinct psychiatric conditions, ranging from social anxiety disorder to obsessive-compulsive disorder to premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
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