How media coverage of dementia drugs erases the people it claims to help
By Lucie Hogger
In this post, Luce explores how pharmaceutical-focused reporting contributes to stigma and social exclusion.
Dementia is rarely out of the news. Just a fortnight ago the Daily Mail, the UK print media’s most prolific health reporter, posed the question, “Could Viagra, the shingles vaccine and an MND drug halt Alzheimer’s?”. The media regularly run such articles on ‘breakthroughs’ in dementia drugs but despite myriad headlines promising hope, an effective pharmaceutical treatment remains elusive. Our new research reveals how this cycle of pharmaceutical optimism contributes to the erasure and ongoing stigmatisation of people living with dementia.
We analysed how dementia drugs were framed in UK news media between 2011 – 2018. We found that news outlets consistently portrayed pharmaceutical “cures” as the holy grail solution while using dehumanising language to describe dementia and those living with it.
Key findings:
- News media framed dementia drugs in four ways: as individual medical solutions, to prevent and eliminate the ills of dementia for society, to combat the rising cost of dementia, and to mobilise political will and investment in a cure.
- Despite repeated pharmaceutical failures, media maintained unwavering hope in drug breakthroughs
- Dehumanising metaphors portrayed dementia as a “wild beast” to be tamed, contributing to stigma
- Non-pharmaceutical approaches to dementia care were largely absent from coverage
- The research reveals how media coverage may contribute to the social exclusion of people with dementia
By fixating on a pharmaceutical cure that may never materialise, media coverage obscures the socially experienced aspects of dementia and the crucial care and support needed to help people affected by dementia to live well right now. This was beautifully articulated in a recent blog post by Prof. Shibley Rahman, physician and former unpaid carer of a person living with dementia:
“Because in the end, the truth is not that people with dementia are waiting to be rescued by science. The truth is that they are already living, here and now. And the question is whether we have the courage to see them, to support them, and to value the carers who stand alongside them.”
With new dementia drugs (lecanemab, donanemab) recently making headlines but being rejected by NICE, this research provides timely and crucial context for understanding media hype around pharmaceutical treatments and draws attention to the need for care for people with dementia in the here and now.
This research was published in SSM – Qualitative Research in Health. Read the full study here: Hogger, L., Swinglehurst, D., & Fudge, N. (2025) Dementia and the disappearing subject: a framing analysis of degus for dementia in UK news media.