Shopping addiction drives people to ruin

Morbid buying behavior with serious consequences

11/21/2012

Shopping addiction or morbid buying behavior is a widespread phenomenon among the adult population in Germany. Without therapeutic help, many of the shopaholics can not free themselves from their compulsive consumption behavior, and they face considerable psychological, social and financial problems, reports dr. med. Dr. phil. Astrid Müller from the Department of Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) in a patient information for buyers.

According to experts, between five and eight percent of adults in Germany are extremely endangered. They tend to irrational purchases, where not the possession of goods but the purchase itself is in the foreground. Thanks to convenient shopping on the Internet, those affected can now satisfy their shopping addiction from home around the clock, which may make it much more difficult to control OCD. To help the shopaholic, the MHH psychologist offers group therapy. In this is the „Recognizing and modifying dysfunctional thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that trigger and sustain the purchase attacks“ as well as the avoidance of the purchase attacks and the „Establish a reasonable buying behavior“ mediated.

Buying addiction often triggered by stressful situations and feelings
Shopping addiction is characterized by a derailed buying behavior in which merchandise is purchased in the course of regular purchase attacks without reasonable motivation. The spending spree is often triggered by negative feelings and the need to distract from problems. So reported „World Online“ by a female patient who, after the death of her husband by a brain tumor in 1984, first became addicted to buying. As a 29-year-old widow, the patients had to raise two small children and wanted to show all sides that she and the children are still well. So expensive clothes for the daughters and themselves was purchased, friends received generous gifts and the patient experienced when buying things downright happiness.

Buyers succumb to the shopping spree
The purchase was a barely comprehensible intoxication for outsiders similar to a trip to drugs, the person concerned reported. Her buying addiction had taken her to court two years after her husband's death, where she had to answer for fraud. Eventually, she was transferred to forensic psychiatry, where no one could help her, and she once again fell into her irrational buying habits on free breaks. At the end of such suffering are often social isolation, economic ruin and significant mental health problems. In the course of the purchase attacks, shopaholics blind completely possible negative consequences of their behavior such as debt, relationship problems subsequent depression and fears. They succumb to their inner shopping urge, and during the acquisition, there is a temporary improvement in mood. This feeling is similar to drugs but short-lived.

Guilt, remorse and shame after shopping
After the purchase or at the moment of delivery of goods put up with buy addicts „typically remorse and guilt feelings“, reports the MHH expert, Astrid Müller. So the purchased goods would subsequently „hid, hidden, excused, often never unpacked or hoarded.“ According to the MHH psychologist, consumerism-endangered are all people who repeatedly acquire things that are not needed. In addition, many of the patients show a low self-esteem and increasingly suffer from other mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety disorders, reports the expert. Otherwise, however, the patients would hardly have anything in common. The buying addiction was to be observed among the poor and the rich, in post-doctoral and educational graduates, in traumatized persons but also in persons with harmless biographies. The commercial addiction is officially classified not as addiction but as obsessive-compulsive disorder, because according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) only the dependence on a substance is recognized as an addiction, but not the behavioral addiction.

Behavior therapy as a way out for shopaholics
A tried-and-tested effective treatment approach is the behavioral therapy of buying addiction, as successfully tested at the University Hospital Erlangen under the direction of Astrid Müller a few years ago and today also practiced at the MHH in Hanover. The aim is for patients to learn to overcome their addictions in twelve 90-minute group sessions. The acquisition of substitute employment is just as much a part of the therapy as a suitably adapted money management or dealing with self-esteem problems. Many sufferers also find support in a support group where they can talk with other buyers about their problems. (Fp)

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