Background: Self-medication behavior, promote by the successive health policies and by many pharmaceutical groups, tends to become generalized. The fast development of self-medication has to ask us questions about the factors that underlies it and on the potential negative consequences that can infer on people’s health. That’s why this study is focus on the self-medication behavior by young adults and on the psychic mechanisms that induce them. Methods: Population: 11 young adults; Data collection: semi-structured interviews. Data analysis: Grounded Theory and clinical analysis. Finding: themes developed: representation of the medicine and the self-medication behaviour; self-medication and feeling of autonomy; patient’s expectations and complexity in the general practioner-patient relationship; self-medication, relationship with the body and health capital; psychic mechanisms underlying self-medication behaviour; incorrect use of medical prescriptions. Discussion: Young adults have new representations of medicine and they express their difficulty to conciliate medical recommendations and the feeling of having to manage alone their heath capital (autonomy and responsibility).
