The art of making the invisible visible: the ADHD marketing

This paper aims to display the structure of pharmaceutical marketing. It addresses the current situation about Attention Deficit Disorder, ADHD, using two documents as examples: An Expert White Paper - ADHD: making the invisible visible, and Spanish Clinical Practice Guidelines on ADHD for children and adolescents. It shows the rhetoric of marketing, the polyphonic quality of the issuer, and stay on the shadows of the developer. It is argued that the patient advocacy associations and the key opinion leaders are essential in pharmaceutical marketing. This kind of marketing is well recognized by the pharmaceutical industry, spending on it good part of its economic resources. This activity is successful changing the perception of the problems of life as medical treatment conditions, and raises economic benefits too. We need to regain a critical perspective on mental health field, as in any other scientific activity or clinic, to deal with this type of marketing.