Despite the fact that it was first described in the psychiatric literature more than 100 years ago, it is only in the past 25 years that compulsive buying disorder has begun to be researched.
Among the initial papers, a 1994 paper by McElroy, Keck, Pope, Smith and Strakowski proposed definitional criteria for compulsive buying which have been widely used in the literature. These researchers defined compulsive buying as a maladaptive preoccupation with buying or shopping, whether impulses or behaviour, that either:
- is irresistible, intrusive, and/or senseless; or
- results in frequent buying of more than can be afforded, frequent buying of items that are not needed, or shopping for longer periods of time than intended. The buying preoccupations, impulses, and behaviours cause marked distress, are time-consuming, significantly interfere with social or occupational functioning, can result in financial problems; and
- do not occur exclusively during periods of hypomania or mania.
Like other addictions, compulsive buying is multi-determined and complex. It can be an attempt to counteract feelings of low self-esteem through the emotional relief and short-lived euphoria that can occur during the purchase phase of the behaviour. Compulsive buyers, who may use the behaviour to self-medicate, also have a higher-than-normal rate of associated disorders such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, eating disorders and impulse-control disorders. A different cohort of compulsive buyers attempt to gain social status or move closer to what they believe is an ‘ideal self’.
People don’t normally recognise that they have a buying problem until they have incurred large amounts of debt, experienced repeated conflict with family members over their spending, encountered legal or criminal problems related to their buying, or see their behaviour being repeated by their children. Much more frequently, a compulsive-buying problem reveals itself in the course of ongoing psychotherapy, either directly or in the context of financial independence and responsibility issues, relationship or parenting problems, or difficulties at work.
I began studying this problem and working with compulsive buyers in the mid-1990s. My study introduced me to the scant literature on compulsive buying and motivated me to edit a book. I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self which introduced mental health and other professionals to the problem. Contributions came from the fields of sociology, consumer behaviour, marketing, community education, psychology and psychiatry.
Over the next five years, I developed the Stopping Overshopping program, which combines psychodynamic principles, cognitive behaviour therapy, motivational interviewing, acceptance and commitment therapy and mindfulness. The program uses tools and techniques that had proven effective in my work with people with eating disorders and had proven efficacy in helping people with other addictions.
I’ve used the program, which is laid out in its entirety in my book To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop, with individuals and groups for the last 15 years. The 12-week program teaches specific skills, tools and strategies that help compulsive buyers break the cycle that leads to compulsive buying and develop the capacity to lead a richer life in the process.
A randomised controlled trial that compared the efficacy of this model with a waiting-list control group was published in 2014 and showed significant improvement on all compulsive buying measures including money and time spent, and number of compulsive shopping episodes. Scores improved from initial levels in the compulsive buying range to scores in the normal buying range at the end of the group. All improvements were maintained at six-month follow-up (Benson, Eisenach, Abrams & van Stolk-Cooke, 2014).
Recently, we decided to harness the power and anonymity of the internet by creating a three-month personalised, interactive text-messaging program for additional support, which is now available in Australia as well as the United States and Canada.
The significant interest in compulsive buying prompted the Australian Psychological Society Institute to invite me to conduct three one-day workshops in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane in March 2017 for psychologists who wanted training in this area. The attendees’ thoughtful and enthusiastic interest made these workshops extremely rich and satisfying for me as well.