Obesity Management Procedures Mentioned in Independent and Pharmaceutical Studies: A Comparative Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Discourse is a social practice in which certain truths and versions of reality are represented, constructed and promoted through language use (Burr, 2015). Therefore, in order to understand people’s relation with health, first, it is necessary to know how health care system and healthy life style are represented via associated discourse. Recent decades have observed rising influence of neoliberalism in reforming health care systems internationally. These reforms include: reduced role of government in public health, growing reliance on private health care services, prevailing competitive atmosphere among medical agencies, and individual’s health related responsibilities (Baum & Murray 1999; Collyer, 2007, 1998, 1997; Collyer &White 2001). In addition to these reforms, Covid-19 pandemic has also drastically affected health care system and people viewpoints about medical authorities. Further, the wake of Covid-19 pandemic has exhaustively emphasized obesity-related health risks. A review on public health in England on the impacts of over weight on coronavirus found that overweight was highly linked with  severity of Covid-19 and death (Public Health England, 2020b, p. 6). These findings set a direct connection between obesity and coronavirus disease, and emphasized the need of weight loss for life protection. Thus, it helped in increasing the business for commercial weight-loss organizations, and set an atmosphere of competition among them. These organizations and medical agencies tended to persuade people for medical treatment to get rid of obesity. For this purpose, they manipulated their discourse through various linguistic techniques as they competed for consumers (Heyes, 2006). However, The Competition and Consumer Act 2010 places restriction on the usage of false and misleading representation in advertisement (Australian Government,2010). With this reference, The Medicines Australia Code of Conduct states that the entire information, claims and representations presented to health professionals must be correct and up-to-date, and should never be misled either by direct implication or by omission. For this purpose, total fifty research studies on obesity management, twenty-five from independent journals and twenty-five from pharmaceutical journals published since (2001-2022) were selected through purposive sampling for analysis. Van Dijk’s (1980) macrostructure model was used to critically analyze the medical journals’ recommendation on obesity management.  In findings, it was found that independent journals emphasized health life choices and behavioural interventions to control obesity. On the other hand, pharmaceutical journals were found to be ambiguous in their prescriptions of healthy diet plans required for obesity management. Further, they exploited various macro-rules i.e. deletion, generalization, selection and construction in their discourse to manipulate the public. The use of these discourse techniques makes their social wrongs more indirect and difficult to identify and eradicate. The findings of study suggest that international health bodies (i.e., WHO)  should pay attention towards these issues and should take steps to resolve it.