The Rise and Fall of the Neurotic Housewife: Patient Sex in Psychotropic Drug Advertising to Physicians 1946–1990

Abstract

Previous studies have demonstrated a sex bias when it comes to the portrayal of men and women in medical journal advertisements for prescription drugs for psychiatric conditions. However, these studies have typically looked at ads over a restricted time period and often for a single diagnosis. Here we focus on ads for 3 diagnoses – anxiety, depression, and a combination of anxiety and depression – and cover nearly half a century to examine how the portrayal of patients changed over that time period with respect to sex. We sampled ads for products treating anxiety, depression, and anxiety/depression published in the Journal of the American Medical Association between 1946 and 1990. Our findings confirm other studies showing a marked preponderance of female patient representation during the 1960s in psychotropic drug advertising. However, we also show that from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, the proportion of ads for drugs featuring depression and/or anxiety indications depicted male patients significantly more than prior years in which females predominated, demonstrating advertisers’ reaction to the critique of gender stereotyping.