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Incomplete Syllogisms as Techniques of Medicalization: The Case of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising in Popular Magazines, 1997 to 2003

The researchers collected a data set of consumer-directed print advertisements for antidepressant medications from three female-directed magazines, three male-directed magazines, and four common readership magazines published between 1997 and 2003. They evaluated these data for advertising techniques that enable drug advertisements to function as agents of medicalization. The investigators discuss the use of incomplete syllogisms in drug advertisements and identify strategies that might lead readers to frame personal physical and/or emotional conditions medically. Key features in advertisements function as the particular and general premises of a syllogism, and the concluding premise—that the reader has a mood disorder—is unarticulated but implied. The researchers examine the implications of incomplete syllogisms in advertisements and suggest that their use might lead readers to redefine their physical and/or emotional problems to fit medical models of mental distress.