Pharmaceuticalisation and medication literacy – a sociological perspective

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Noémia Lopes: : Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIES-Iscte); Instituto Universitário Egas Moniz (IUEM)

Carla Rodrigues: Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIES-Iscte); University of Amsterdam (UvA, AISSR)

Elsa Pegado: Iscte - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIES-Iscte)

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The increasing diversification of the purposes for which medicines are used, beyond health and illness, including wellness management and performance enhancement purposes, signals an expanding pharmaceuticalisation of everyday life (Williams et al., 2008; Fox et al., 2009), which is a social hallmark of today. The scope of this framework includes pharmaceuticals, natural medicines and food supplements, often used in alternation for the same purposes (Lopes et al., 2015), either prescribed or over-the-counter. It is in this context that the requirement for personal responsibility and informed user has been the institutional standard in the promotion of the safe use of medicines, and within which the issues around medication literacy have developed. The essentially functional content of the latter needs to be problematised in terms of its social scope. This is so, particularly in regard to its limitation in capturing the social rationalities that organize the criteria for using information on medicines, in the current context of growing lay autonomy and multiple reference sources. Such an imperative is accentuated in the face of a post-pandemic future, marked by an increased pharmaceuticalisation and by new safety uncertainties. In this paper, we aim to discuss the social contextuality of medication literacy, identifying the social processuality that organises the management of information and the practices of medicines use in everyday life. The aim is, then, to broaden the approach to medication literacy and highlight the need to consider its sociological dimension.

This presentation is based on the results of one of the components of an ongoing study on the use of medicines and dietary supplements for performance management in Portugal, financed by Foundation for Science and Technology (PTDC/SOC/30734/2017). The results report on data obtained through the application of a questionnaire in pharmacies on 'Medication and dietary supplements - information content' (n=1107).