This study aims to analyze the self-medication profile of residents of the Cangalheiro, Salobro and Seriema neighborhoods in the city of Caxias do Maranhão in 2016. It can be seen that there are causes that lead to self-medication, including financial difficulties faced by a large proportion of people, trying to solve illnesses based on the opinions of other people or other sources of information, deficiencies in the public health system, excessive advertising by the pharmaceutical market through publicity campaigns where there is an omission of information about the side and adverse effects caused by the use of drugs. This work is based on the authors Loyola Filho, Damasceno, Chacra and Cassiani, who made pertinent observations on the subject, as well as a bibliographical survey of articles from SciELO. The nature of the study is descriptive of the cross-sectional observational type through the collection of information on self-medication and also sociodemographic.