ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that pharmacy sales figures in France show a lower use of self-medication compared to other European countries (Lecomte, 1994; Karsenty, 1994; Blenkisopp and Bradley, 1996; Burnier and Schneider, 2001; Burnier and Jeanneret, 2001; Coulomb and Baumelou, 2007), the practice of self-medication is not new.2 Numerous works in fact have already taken an interest in the practice and endeavoured to define its factors in accordance with the socioeconomic or socioprofessional characteristics of the users and depending on the pathologies concerned (Molina, 1988; Barthe, 1990; Aïach and Cèbe, 1991; Buclin and Ammon, 2001; Raynaud, 2008).3 The effect of social background on recourse to self-medication is in truth a rather controversial aspect in these works, as noted in my discussion of the influence of this factor on the perception of symptoms. Thus, McKinlay (1975) observed a greater tendency to self-medicate amongst poor people and those belonging to the lower social classes; whereas Raynaud (2008) showed that it was more common for people of working age, in good health and from more privileged social and cultural backgrounds to treat themselves without any prior advice or by following pharmacists’ recommendations, while people from more modest backgrounds took less recourse to self-medication and more often followed the advice of a doctor when they did so.
