The Anxieties of Globalization: Antidepressant Sales and Economic Crisis in Argentina Export

@article{citeulike:1206574, abstract = {This paper describes the role of market research firms in shaping the actions of key players in the pharmaceutical arena. It focuses on strategies for marketing novel antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs) to doctors in Buenos Aires during the Argentine financial crisis of 2001, posing the question of whether increased antidepressant sales were due to the social situation or to promotional practices. This case demonstrates how pharmaceutical relations' - interactions between doctors and pharmaceutical companies - are structured by a gift economy whose effects are monitored through the sales numbers produced by database firms. It suggests that the use of these numbers takes on special importance given the distinctiveness of both the Argentine context and the antidepressant market. More generally, the case points to the interpretive flexibility of psychotropic medication. In the Argentine setting, doctors' prescription of SSRIs was dependent neither on a diagnosis of depression nor on a biological understanding of mental disorder. These drugs found a different means of entering the professionally mediated marketplace: doctors understood and used SSRIs as a treatment not for a lack of serotonin in the brain, but for the suffering caused by the social situation - the sense of insecurity and vulnerability that the economic and political crisis had wrought. 10.1177/0306312704042624}, author = {Lakoff, Andrew}, citeulike-article-id = {1206574}, citeulike-linkout-0 = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312704042624}, citeulike-linkout-1 = {http://sss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/2/247}, citeulike-linkout-2 = {http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15297998}, citeulike-linkout-3 = {http://www.hubmed.org/display.cgi?uids=15297998}, day = {1}, doi = {10.1177/0306312704042624}, journal = {Social Studies of Science}, keywords = {antidepressantmarketing, antidepressants, argentina, audit, gifteconomy, marketing, neoliberalism, pharmaceuticals, psychiatry}, month = {April}, number = {2}, pages = {247--269}, posted-at = {2008-09-28 05:52:30}, priority = {2}, title = {The Anxieties of Globalization: Antidepressant Sales and Economic Crisis in Argentina}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312704042624}, volume = {34}, year = {2004} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1206574 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1206574 N2 - This paper describes the role of market research firms in shaping the actions of key players in the pharmaceutical arena. It focuses on strategies for marketing novel antidepressants (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, SSRIs) to doctors in Buenos Aires during the Argentine financial crisis of 2001, posing the question of whether increased antidepressant sales were due to the social situation or to promotional practices. This case demonstrates how pharmaceutical relations' - interactions between doctors and pharmaceutical companies - are structured by a gift economy whose effects are monitored through the sales numbers produced by database firms. It suggests that the use of these numbers takes on special importance given the distinctiveness of both the Argentine context and the antidepressant market. More generally, the case points to the interpretive flexibility of psychotropic medication. In the Argentine setting, doctors' prescription of SSRIs was dependent neither on a diagnosis of depression nor on a biological understanding of mental disorder. These drugs found a different means of entering the professionally mediated marketplace: doctors understood and used SSRIs as a treatment not for a lack of serotonin in the brain, but for the suffering caused by the social situation - the sense of insecurity and vulnerability that the economic and political crisis had wrought. 10.1177/0306312704042624 IS - 2 JF - Social Studies of Science EP - 269 TI - The Anxieties of Globalization: Antidepressant Sales and Economic Crisis in Argentina VL - 34 SP - 247 KW - antidepressantmarketing KW - antidepressants KW - argentina KW - audit KW - gifteconomy KW - marketing KW - neoliberalism KW - pharmaceuticals KW - psychiatry AU - Lakoff, Andrew PY - 2004/04/01/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0306312704042624 ER -