Prescription Drug Use and the Elderly
The present article makes a contribution to sociocultural approaches to the issues linking aging and prescription drugs and is based on research results coming from different studies we have conducted in this area. The article tackles the phenomenon “prescription drugs” from three relational dimensions found in the literature: “obligation-medication” as qualifier of the relationship that older people have with prescription drugs; “concession-medication” as backdrop to the therapeutic relationship between physician and older patient; and finally “compassion-medication” as metaphor for the role psychotropic drugs play in determining the status of the elderly in our advanced Western societies.