Disease Mongering in Direct-to-Consumer Advertising and the Expansion of the Antidepressant Market* Jennifer Arney, University of Houston-Clear Lake Cecilia Menjivar, Arizona State University The recent trend toward health care consumerism is largely the product of market practices, which have instilled the notion of health care as a product to be purchased by informed, empowered consumers, rather than a service bestowed upon a patient by a paternalistic provider. In recent years, health care consumerism has been facilitated by direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of pharmaceutical products. In this paper, we use the case of DTCA for antidepressant medications to examine medicalization tech- niques used to promote consumerism and establish and expand the antidepressant mar- ket. We used content analysis of DTCA from the 1997–2006 issues of a broad sample of women’s, men’s, and common readership magazines to identify techniques of medi- calization, and we analyzed in-depth interviews with magazine readers and antidepres- sant users to examine how such messages are received. Findings are presented within a framework of economic sociology, which allowed us to unveil the links between emo- tions and social action that undergird responses to medicalization techniques and con- sumption of advertised products. Disease Mongering in DTCA and the Expansion of the Antidepressant Market There have been a number of major changes to health care in recent years, among the most marked of which are the increased consumerism of health care and the corresponding activities of health-care consumers. Consumerism in health care is largely the product of market practices, which have instilled the notion of health care as a product to be purchased by informed, empowered consumers, rather than a service that is bestowed upon a patient by a paternal- istic provider. Thus, Fligstein (2002) observes, “that we were once ‘patients’ and are now ‘consumers’ reflects how far market logic has gone in redefining the situation” (p. 73). Direct to consumer advertising of pharmaceutical prod- ucts (hereafter, “DTCA”) is a particularly prominent aspect of, and principal contributor to, such market logic. Direct-to-consumer advertising is an increasingly prevalent aspect of Americans’ daily lives (Brownfield et al. 2004; Rosenthal et al. 2003). The quantity, visibility, and impact of DTCA have risen substantially since the Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 84, No. 4, November 2014, 519–544 © 2014 Alpha Kappa Delta: The International Sociology Honor Society DOI: 10.1111/soin.12062