PORTRAYAL OF WOMEN AND ELDERLY PATIENTS IN PSYCHOTROPIC-DRUG ADVERTISEMENTS

Differences in patterns of prescribing psychotropic drugs for men and women have been well documented, especially in antidepressants and anxiolitics. One explanation offered is that physicians are influenced by gender stereotyping in pharmaceutical drug advertisements. It is argued that if drug ads display disproportionately more women than men, or if they portray women only as helpless, depressed, and incompetent, cultural stereotypes are reinforced, so that physicians may be likely to diagnose and treat women differently from men. To determine whether gender bias exists in recent drug advertisements, a frequency analysis was performed of all psychotropic drug advertisements appearing in American Journal of Psychiatry (AJP) and American Family Physician (AFP) between 1986 and 1989. Since females are depressed twice as commonly as males in the general population, it was expected that twice as many antidepressant ads would depict females. The study found that the actual ratio of females to males in antidepressant ads was 5:1 in AJP and 10:0 in AFP. Other analyses were performed comparing the two journals. As expected, women and the elderly were overrepresented in ads in AFP compared to the psychiatry journal. These patterns in recent psychotropic drug advertisements are discussed in relation to gender stereotypes in society at large. It is proposed that overrepresentation of females in certain categories of psychotropic drug advertising may serve to reinforce cultural stereotypes in physicians, so that they may diagnose and treat women differently in sex biased ways.