Abstract
The article adopts a historical and critical perspective concerning the hegemonic model of mental health focused on the need to pharmacologically restore a neurochemical imbalance. In the field of psychiatry, there seems to be a broad agreement to defend the thesis according to which, between 1952 and 1954, with the discovery of the first neuroleptic, chlorpromazine, a process of radical transformation of psychiatric knowledge would begin. In 1954, the North American Laboratory Smith, Kline and French (today Glaxo Smith) bought the patent to market that drug in the United States. We analyze the advertising campaign addressed to women. The advertising of this powerful psychiatric drug, throughout the 1950s and 1960s, allows us to understand the gender perspective existing in the pharmaceutical industry and the role of neuroleptics in the management of femininity.
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