The other face of medical globalization? Pharmaceutical data, prescribing trends, and the social localization of psychostimulants

Filipe, Angela Marques

Abstract

The last two decades have seen an exponential growth in the consumption and prescription of psychostimulants for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) worldwide. While much has been said in the literature about the medicalization and globalization of ADHD, comparatively less is known about how these processes play out on the ground and outside English-speaking countries, where psychostimulants have become the first-line treatment for ADHD. By combining historical and clinical ethnographic research, this article charts the transnational histories and everyday lives of psychostimulants in Portugal at the nexus between what I term processes of medical globalization and social localization. It explores how international medical standards and pharmaceutical regulations converged with local prescribing trends and sociomaterial contingencies that placed this small Southern European country among the top 20 world consumers of methylphenidate. Following a methylphenidate shortage and the social explanations of clinicians, this exploration also shows how the dissemination of pharmaceutical sales and prescribing data by the media triggered a public––and increasingly politicized––debate on psychostimulant drug treatments. More broadly, this article illuminates how psychopharmaceuticals are circulated, contextualized, marketed, and modulated in their journey and it advances a relational and processual understanding of their shifting, multiscalar configurations.

Citation

Filipe, A. M. (2023). The other face of medical globalization? Pharmaceutical data, prescribing trends, and the social localization of psychostimulants. BioSocieties, 18(2), 335-357. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00271-x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 27, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Mar 8, 2022
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Deposit Date: Nov 7, 2023
• Journal: BioSocieties
• Print ISSN: 1745-8552
• Electronic ISSN: 1745-8560
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 18
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 335-357
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41292-022-00271-x
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1900369