Now compulsive chaps drop 'til they shop

RETAIL therapy is a phrase heard most often in association with women, but that may be because we are not looking in the right places for dedicated male shoppers.

RETAIL therapy is a phrase heard most often in association with women, but that may be because we are not looking in the right places for dedicated male shoppers.

Swinburne University of Technology's Michael Kyrios, who is making a study of compulsive shoppers, says one reason surveys are not picking up more men is that they are not likely to be conducted at hardware outlets or electrical stores, where men are likelier to be found.

According to US research, while 6 per cent of women were compulsive shoppers, men were well within reach of that disturbing proportion, at 5.5 per cent.

"(Until) recently we thought it was more of a female issue, because more women report," said Professor Kyrios, a psychologist. He has applied for Australian Research Council funding for the empirical study necessary to establish the scope of the problem here.

The study of the uncontrollable urge to buy is an offshoot of the study of hoarding, part of obsessive compulsive disorder. "The hoarding part we are beginning to understand quite well, but not the acquisition or buying part of it," Professor Kyrios said.

"These people believe if they buy something they will feel better, but they don't, so why do they maintain that belief?"

One internet-based study said 30 per cent of people regarded themselves "problem buyers", compared with 12 per cent who said they were compulsive or acknowledged behaviour that added up to being compulsive.

Theories of causes included emotional deprivation in childhood, issues relating to low self-esteem, excitement seeking, the need for control ("they have a high need for control but a low sense of control") and filling avoid.

"They have a disability, social problems, financial difficulties, personal problems, all because of compulsive buying," Professor Kyrios said.

So while many people knew what it was like to go mad at the half-yearly sales, stampeding with other bargain junkies towards the cut-price bins and fetching up at the cash register with armfuls of discounted treasures, Professor Kyrios knew the truly compulsive shoppers had a problem of a whole other order of magnitude. Their behaviour was "excessive, uncontrollable and repetitive".

There was not much joy in being someone who at the moment of buying and soon thereafter experienced a high, followed by a low point of profound guilt and remorse, he said.

This was explained, partly, when it was understood that the key word was compulsive, as in obsessive compulsive, because it was the same dark territory.