“ Pharma patienthood ” : The Patient Constructed in Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertising

Over the last 15 years there has been a large body of research and considerable public debate on direct to-consumer (DTC) advertising for prescription pharmaceuticals. Concerns include the accuracy, fairness, consequences, and gender messages of these advertisements. Less attention has been paid to the role of DTC advertisement in the social construction of patienthood in American society.

Based on a content analysis of a sample of 40 broadcast DTC ads, this paper addresses two questions: What is a patient as constructed through this communication channel? What are the messages about what how patients should feel and act embedded in DTC advertising? In short, we seek to understand what might be called the construction of pharma patienthood. Moreover, we argue that the scripting of patienthood in DTC pharmaceutical advertising forms part of a discourse regime that can be read as containing meanings, communicated through sights and sounds, that produce a subject, namely the modern patient.