Questão 3428

(Cesgranrio - 1995)

SHOPAHOLICS

(1)        What are the warning signs of compulsive shopping? There is still very little known about compulsive spenders.           

(2)        "A compulsion is the uncontrollable need to do something. The individual is overwhelmed by the desire to do very stupid things in order to reduce anxiety", psychiatrists say. "The tension is there, and even though they recognize that what they do may be ridiculous, they do it anyway."

(3)        Researchers estimate that as many as 10 million Americans are compulsive shoppers, with a growing number of people addicted to home-shopping catalogs and TV-shopping services.

(4)        A compulsive shopper told a researcher that she could never go to a supermarket and buy just one bottle of milk. It had to be two. Why? "I'd been brought up to please everybody," she said. "So I thought I was pleasing the store."

(5)        To help anxious shopaholics, who often wind up with major financial and personal difficulties, researchers at several universities in the United States are working on a variety of therapeutic approaches, from behavior modification to experiments with a drug used to treat such obsessions as ritualized hand-washing.

(6)        Psychiatrists and social scientists have various theories as to why people engage in compulsive behavior. Shopaholics, they suggest, could be sexually frustrated, might suffer from lack of self-esteem, or they may just have a neurotic reaction to television commercials and glossy advertisements.

(7)        "Often, there is a background of emotional problems such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse and mood disorders," says Dr. Donald Black, a professor of psychiatry at the University of lowa College of Medicine. Though overshoppers later experience considerable remorse, they "find shopping exciting. They think about doing it. They fantasize about the selecting and the purchasing. They have closets full of clothing they don't wear, but feel embarrassed about returning items. They go into a store for a specific, such as a shampoo, and come out with $100 worth of goods."

(8)        Who needs help? "If you have had clothes for six months and haven't taken the tags off," one compulsive shopper recently suggested, "you probably need to evaluate what you are doing."

Adapted from Jon Anderson, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, July 24, 1994.

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