Reacción a "Link the consumption of lorazepam in the series 'The White Lotus' with an increase in Google searches for this anti-anxiety drug"

The study has a design that is appropriate for its research question. Comparing the evolution of interest in lorazepam with two other anxiolytics [alprazolam and clonazepam] lends methodological validity to the study, as it can more strongly argue that The White Lotus had an effect only on Google searches related to lorazepam and not to other drugs, thereby reinforcing its hypothesis.

Understanding the causes of this phenomenon (and, therefore, how it fits with existing evidence) requires contextualising the empirical findings within several concepts or perspectives:

• The medicalisation of everyday life, which is defined as the process by which a social problem (in this case, an inability to form social relationships or insomnia) is defined using medical terminology (anxiety, depression, ADHD), its origin is interpreted from a biomedical framework (social causes are not addressed, but rather individual vulnerability) or it is treated with a medical intervention (prescription of anxiolytics or antidepressants) (Conrad, 2007).
• The gender perspective helps us understand that medicalisation processes are especially frequent or intense in women because their everyday suffering (what has Victoria's life been like as a woman in the US? What gender inequalities has she had to face?) tends to be defined in psychiatric terms (and therefore pharmacologised) more frequently in women.

In Spain, such a change would probably not be seen, because access to the public health system will likely make it easier for many questions related to health issues or drug prescriptions to be addressed in a primary care medical consultation, meaning that the need to resolve questions online will be much less frequent. The fundamentally private system in the US will encourage the use of other means, with consequences that will probably lead to more self-diagnosis and non-prescribed consumption.

It is complex to tackle this issue, because the psychotherapeuticisation of life is generating a new cultural framework on many levels, not only in the audiovisual industry. In any case, given the immediate effect that the normalisation and romanticisation of consumption in the media can have on the lifestyle habits of the population, regulations should be established that, as has happened in other areas of public health (images of tobacco users, alcohol advertising, etc.), can discourage the consumption of psychotropic drugs.