Original title: Over-the-Counter Painkiller Use in the United Kingdom and Taiwan, A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Self-Medication, Pain Perceptions, and Dependency Considerations
Liwei Kuo, Samuel Bennett · September 2026
Pain can hurt a person's quality of life, and many people treat it by buying non-prescription, over-the-counter painkillers. Because medicines are easier to buy off the shelf in some countries than others, researchers wanted to know if this changes how people take them. They compared members of the public in the United Kingdom and Taiwan using an online survey. The survey asked people about how they perceive pain, how they treat themselves, their background, and their worries about becoming hooked on these drugs. The researchers found that people in both places reported similar rates of painkiller use, even though the two countries have different levels of medicine access. People in both places also shared similar preferences for treating their own pain. Reported addiction levels were low in both groups, but worries about dependency strongly shaped how participants used the drugs. Access alone does not dictate use.
You are deciding whether to have a snack. One kitchen keeps snacks on the counter, the other locks them in a cabinet. You might grab one more often when they are easy to reach, but both kitchens actually have the same snacking rate. In this paper, the snack stands for the painkiller, the kitchen is the country, and the snacking rate is how often people use painkillers. The surprising result is that making painkillers easier to buy does not make people use them more—something about how they think about pain and dependency matters more.
Millions of people manage pain with over-the-counter painkillers, but how they use them varies by culture in ways that are not fully understood. This study shows that simply making painkillers more or less available does not change how often people use them—cultural attitudes toward pain and dependency matter just as much. These findings can help shape responsible self-medication guidelines that work across different societies.
The abstract does not specify sample size or demographics, so generalizability is unclear. The study is cross-sectional and relies on self-report, so causal claims cannot be made. It only compares two countries, limiting broader cultural conclusions. Dependency was low overall, so the findings may not apply to populations with higher dependency rates.
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Over-the-Counter Painkiller Use in the United Kingdom and Taiwan, A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Self-Medication, Pain Perceptions, and Dependency Considerations — Liwei Kuo, Samuel Bennett — PsyArXiv — doi:10.31234/osf.io/bky9s_v1
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.