Using Qualitative Content Analysis to Study Consumer Reports on Adverse Drug Reactions

Using qualitative content analysis on adverse drug reactions reports filed to an open Internet-based reporting system in Sweden, this study explored patients’ and consumers’ experiences of antidepressant treatment and the medical encounter. By scrutinizing free text comments in 181 individual consumer reports of adverse drug reactions, we could obtain important information about how people, as individuals and as a group, experience mental health problems, their diagnosis and treatment, and their relationships with the health care personnel. This research illustrated how a series of contextual factors (e.g., time pressure, inferior knowledge of adverse drug reactions, no follow-up meetings, and overall medical dominance) can risk medicalizing and thereby social problems resulting in overdiagnosis and overtreatment of mental ill health; something that could corrupt patients’ future trust in seeking help. By using qualitative content analysis to study free text comments in patient reports of adverse drug reactions, it is possible to broaden the understanding on how drugs affect the user in terms of treatment effects but also how the medicine is affecting the user in his or her daily life and identify new serious reactions. It can also be an important tool to analyze, for instance, sociological aspects in terms of what is going on in the medical meeting and how the doctor-patient interaction may look like from the patient’s point of view revealing power imbalance and inadequate care. We strongly recommend this qualitative approach for further research and within a clinical context to bring the patient perspective to the fore.