IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v235y2019ic7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Tracing medicinal agencies: Antidepressants and life-effects

Author

Listed:
  • Ruckenstein, Minna

Abstract

This article is inspired by the social life of methods approach, joining a movement among social scientists engaging with ‘big data’ to contribute to methodological innovation and conceptual development in research and knowledge translation. It explores human-drug associations using a computational tool, Medicine Radar, meanwhile raising questions about the ways a digital device pushes us to rethink how drugs are known in the everyday. Medicine Radar is an apparatus for exploring human-drug associations by means of Suomi24 (Finland24) data, containing 19 million health-related online posts spanning a period of 16 years. Using defined markers, Medicine Radar sorts the medicine talk in health-related discussions, thereby assisting us to ‘see’ the actions of the drug and human responses to them. This kind of approach distances the drug from the illness experience, drawing attention to the private details of the human-drug relationship. The empirical analysis separates three areas of antidepressant use: articulations of reactions, stabilizing the life effects of drugs and coming to terms with antidepressants. Together, the online posts urge us to think of everyday experience where the effects of drugs – intended or unintended – are always lived. The side effects of antidepressants, including drowsiness, ravenous hunger, loss of sexual desire and emotional numbness, become life effects. As will be demonstrated, the move from conceptualizing such fallout as side effects to understanding them as life effects has political ramifications. The computation tool adds collective weight to antidepressant experiences and calls for politicizing their effects on life.

Suggested Citation

  • Ruckenstein, Minna, 2019. "Tracing medicinal agencies: Antidepressants and life-effects," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 235(C), pages 1-1.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:235:y:2019:i:c:7
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112368
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953619303533
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112368?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:235:y:2019:i:c:7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.