Definition
Pharmaceuticalization describes the transformation of human conditions into targets for pharmaceutical intervention.
Introduction: More and More Pharmaceuticals
Over the past three decades, the number of people around the world who take pharmaceuticals regularly has increased, the number of pharmaceuticals available to them has increased, and the list of official medical reasons for prescribing pharmaceuticals has increased. In 2001, the global pharmaceutical market was valued at approximately 390 billion US dollars, and in 2019 it has increased threefold to 1.25 trillion US dollars, with the largest increases in the US and European countries (Mikulic, 2020). Part of this expansion reflects that more people benefit from medical innovation than before, but it also reflects that pharmaceuticals have come to play a larger role in population health and in everyday lives than previously. Moreover, the proliferation of pharmaceuticals influences our understanding and public...
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Møllebæk, M. (2021). Pharmaceuticalization. In: Crawford, P., Kadetz, P. (eds) Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_152-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26825-1_152-1
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