Calls for 'shopping addiction' to be classed as mental illness

Admitting to occasional bouts of shopaholism might seem like a light-hearted confession resulting in little more than belt- tightening and spending less on the credit card.

However, shopping addiction could soon be recognised as a mental illness thanks to pivotal research that has shown the problem has distinct causes and characteristics.

Experts have welcomed the news, which comes in the wake of internet gaming addiction being officially recognised by the World Health Organisation – and the first NHS diagnosis of a 15-year-old boy with the condition in June.
Bags of trouble: Experts want compulsive shopping disorders to be recognised as mental illnesses


An official classification of shopping addiction may lead to scrutiny of ‘hard sell’ tactics used by High Street and online retailers that encourage shoppers to buy.

Professor Astrid Muller, a clinical psychologist with a special interest in addiction at Hannover Medical School, Germany, said of the findings: ‘It’s time to recognise compulsive shopping disorder as a separate mental health condition, which will help us develop better treatments and diagnosis methods.’

Aniko Maraz, a shopping addiction specialist researcher at Humboldt University, Berlin agreed, saying there was now a need for ‘public preventative strategies’ of the type that are used to help people quit smoking, drinking and, most recently, gaming.

The condition – compulsive buying disorder (CBD) – once came under the umbrella term of impulse-control disorder, along with pyromania, an urge to start fires, and kleptomania, the urge to steal.

Sufferers of CBD often describe an increasing urge or anxiety that can only be alleviated when a purchase is made. Research has suggested that up to six per cent of the population may suffer from ‘an uncontrollable desire to shop and spend money’. Six in ten patients are women.

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