Compulsive buyers may top 10 million in U.S.
By Shankar Vedantam | Washington Post | October 16, 2006
Lucille Schenk bought $20,000 worth of jewelry a year ago, plunging herself into
debt and despair. She knew something was wrong but couldn't help herself: For
hours each day, she watched a jewelry channel and the Home Shopping Network, until
the salespeople felt like family.
When Schenk finally sought help, New York psychologist April Lane Benson advised
her to have a “conversation” with the jewelry before she made her next
purchase, as a way to put some distance between herself and her compulsion.
“I would say: 'You are so beautiful, I can't live without you. I love the
way you sparkle,' ” recalled Schenk, 62, in an interview. “The
jewelry would say back: 'You need me. You look pretty when you wear me.' I would
say: 'I do need you. I can't possibly think of being without you. But something
has to change. I need to stop this. I can't afford a penny more.' ”
There may be more than 10 million people like Schenk in the United States, according
to a study published this month in the American Journal of Psychiatry. They
shop compulsively, buy things they don't need and often can't afford, and jeopardize
their work, their families and their mental health.
The problem is widespread and serious enough that the American Psychiatric Association,
which is updating its influential bible of mental disorders, is weighing whether
to list compulsive buying as a disorder.
That proposal is sure to stir a long-running debate about whether psychiatry is
turning every troubling aspect of human behavior into a disease. Some researchers
argue that categorizing binge buying as a medical problem takes the focus away
from social factors such as the impact of advertising, easy credit and commercialization.
Avis Mysyk, an anthropologist at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, said therapists
shouldn't be advised to “throw the person out of your office” but added,
“One thing with the holistic perspective is we don't isolate the individual
from the wider context, or just look at the wider context to the exclusion of
the individual.”
There are no historical data to show whether the number of people affected is
growing, but experts agree that the easy access to shopping provided by the Internet,
24-hour cable networks and malls has probably had an impact.
Most people can use shopping networks and credit cards without losing control,
experts say. But for people who can't control themselves, easy availability of
the thing they crave aggravates the problem. Like other addicts, binge buyers
usually want to stop but find they can't.
The new study in the American Journal of Psychiatry was conducted by a team
led by Lorrin Koran, a psychiatrist at Stanford University.
Besides the sheer number of people, Koran said, what surprised him was that men
were just as likely as women to be binge buyers. The study also found that compulsive
buyers were likely to earn less than $50,000.
Classifying compulsive buying as a disorder could have legal implications. Koran
and other psychiatrists believe that at least some people who end up in bankruptcy
are binge buyers, suffering from a disease similar to alcoholism, and that this
should mitigate their personal responsibility for their debts.
Koran said it's a mistake to think that compulsive buyers are the same as people
who occasionally overextend themselves financially, or to suggest that anyone
who runs up debt is afflicted.
“This is persistent, compulsive behavior that gets them into trouble financially,
at work, with their families or their friends,” he said.
Instead of getting home in time to make dinner for their children, Koran said,
binge buyers may stay at malls until closing, disrupting their family life. And
binge buyers almost always shop alone. Unlike people who often shop with friends
because it's enjoyable, compulsive shoppers usually say they're ashamed to tell
other people about their behavior, much like people with other addictions, Koran
said.
“It doesn't become a disorder until it becomes very time-consuming, causes
substantial strains on a marriage, interferes with job-related activities,”
said Eric Hollander, a psychiatrist at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who
wrote a commentary on Koran's study.
Hollander and Koran said binge buyers who seek help report being aided by a variety
of treatments; both physicians have treated the problem.
Hollander said those who shop because they're suffering from anxiety problems
can be helped by antidepressants such as Prozac or Paxil. If the problem is caused
by mood imbalances, mood stabilizers such as lithium can help, he said.
Binge buyers who also have other addictions, such as alcoholism, may be helped
by opioid antagonists, drugs that block receptors that channel pleasure messages
in the brain, Hollander said. And people who shop because they're restless or
hyperactive can be helped by stimulant medications used to treat attention-deficit
disorder.
For the study, Koran administered a questionnaire to 2,513 adults. Koran and Hollander
said the questionnaire, known as the Compulsive Buying Scale, was developed several
years ago and has been shown to be 90 percent accurate in identifying people with
the problem and in determining when they're cured.
Benson, the New York psychologist, said she empathizes with binge buyers because
she went through a similar “compulsive buy-return cycle.”
She believes that making compulsive shopping an official psychiatric disorder
would draw attention to it, but she agrees with Mysyk that there are many societal
aspects to the problem. She cited credit-card marketing that encourages people
to stay in debt, and said there ought to be regulations against it.