THE INFLUENCE OF DTCA OF ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS
Janne Lehtinen
Haley Park
Lizzy Sun
Tiffany Wei
Findings
Introduction
- Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) increases peoples' awareness and knowledge of prescription drugs and health concerns
- Previous Research:
- Young adults are vulnerable to DTCA of antidepressant drugs
- DTCA encourages people to "drug-seeking"
- and unable to define their mental health problems
Methods
QUANTITATIVE
- 80 participants from online survey
- 19-questions, open-ended and close-ended
- Distributed via Email
- SPSS Software has been used to analyze survey
Research Question
QUALITATIVE
Critical Assessments
Conclusion
- Influence of DTCA of antidepressant drugs on young adults (SFU undergraduates)
- and Pressures of University
- 4 face-to-face interviewees
- 2 SFU undergraduate students
- 1 Health Care Professionals (from SFU)
- 1 Medical student (outside of SFU)
STRUCTURE
1) General questions concerning occupation, and basics of depression and antidepressants
2) Visual component: 2 DTC antidepressant drug commercials (Zoloft and Abilify)
3) Follow up questions on the advertisements (feelings, thoughts, concersn, ideas, etc.)
Conclusion
- limitation of the methods
- lacking variety of participants
- nature of the survey
- ethics
- interview setiing concerning visuals
- Undergrad students are critical towards antidepressant drugs and its advertisements.
- They experience depressive symptoms (possibly clinical depression in some cases), but they prefer not to be dependent on medication.
- They rather look for alternatives
- students are skeptical about antidepressant drug advertising
- DTCA does not encourage our population into "drug-seeking", regardless of Pressures experienced during university
- Therefore, young adults within our research are not vulnerable to DTCA
Suggestions
- new type of DTCA
- visual component to survey
- attitudes toward DTCA after repetitive exposure with control group