Advertising, faith in pills, lack of time and trust in a doctor: pharmacists and patients about the prevalence of self-medication practices in Russia

The objective reasons for the spread of self-treatment practices are a decrease in state participation in the organization of medical care on the ground, an increase in life expectancy, the prevalence of chronic diseases and an increase in the proportion of older people. Of great importance are the increase in the cost of medical services, the growth of the educational and living standards of people, wide access to professional medical information, a decrease in the level of trust in doctors, the focus is not on recovery, but on eliminating the symptoms of the disease, as well as the availability of groups of drugs sold without a doctor's prescription and their aggressive advertising in the media. Online health consultations are widespread, and there are numerous sites containing medical information for non-professionals, offering options for "diagnosing" online. The relevance is determined by the ever-increasing number of people resorting to self-treatment practices, and the negative consequences that occur as a result of self-treatment. The reasons why citizens of the Russian Federation resort to self-treatment are presented, an analysis of these reasons is given by collecting the maximum amount of research data, both from patients and from specialists. The methodology and methodology of research involves an appeal to an interdisciplinary analysis of human behavior in the proposed institutional environment. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of everyday practices - routinized repetitive actions of a mass nature. Methodological arsenal of the research: survey of patients (n=388, online and handout questionnaires), taking into account the opinions of specialists working in the health industry (expert survey, analysis of provoked documents, etc.), results of content analysis. The problem of the negative consequences of self-treatment is considered within the framework of public health and the sociology of medicine; a set of sociological studies (mix design) is used for empirical analysis. Based on the division of the concepts of "responsible self-medication" and "self-medication", the authors highlight the negative consequences of the latter. A contradiction is shown between the patients' attitudes to a quick recovery of working capacity (unwillingness or impossibility to spend time and financial resources to receive medical care, temporary refusal to perform labor functions, emphasis on eliminating symptoms) and an active offer on the market of services and goods (online counseling, active advertising medicines and ways to eliminate the symptoms of the disease).