A word new to me, appropriate for the Christmas season. Today's paper (excerpted) reports:
The holiday season is notoriously stressful for people with drinking problems and overeating issues. But times have never been tougher for those diagnosed with a controversial disorder called "compulsive buying," or "shopaholism."
Compulsive buying was first identified in 1915 by a German doctor who called it "oniomania" for the Greek term "onios," which means "for sale." It isn't listed in the American Psychiatric Association's catalog of officially recognized psychiatric disorders. But, because of a growing body of evidence that compulsive buying is itself a disorder -- not just a symptom of something else -- it is under consideration for inclusion in the next edition, to be released in 2011.
A group of Stanford University researchers caused a stir in 2006 when they reported in the American Journal of Psychiatry that about 5.8% of the U.S. population can be said to have "compulsive buying behavior," characterized by an abnormal preoccupation with shopping, purchasing of unnecessary items and adverse consequences, like "impaired social or occupational functioning, and/or financial problems."
