Published with permission of the administration ...

Posted with permission from Russian Medical Journal.

Shopomaniya - the art of beautiful death from depression

In our large cities are more and more opened new and exciting super-markets. In Moscow today, you can find almost anything your heart desires, from the huge stores to luxury boutiques. And most women shoppers, who need warm, caring and vital originality. This paper is devoted to an interesting problem, which is a slang name of Applied Psychology - shopomaniya. Many psychologists pay attention to facts which indicate that the passion to make an insane amount of shopping can affect a person's life. I would like to reflect and to delineate the border between the normal desire to make purchases (to keep their lives) and the dependence of this process. And if my reader is aware that the subject of this dependence, then this article can help to control their behavior and excessive desire to buy, and sometimes unnecessary goods. So shopomaniya (shopogolizm, oniomania), or as they call it the store addiction is an obsessive desire to make purchases in amounts that exceed reasonable limits. More intense psychological study of the phenomenon being the U.S., a country with the world's largest consumption of goods and services. According to the American Psychological Association in this country has from 12 to 25 million shopaholics, people prone to this syndrome. In England the figure is around one million people. In Russia there are no reliable studies on this topic. Some Western psychologists tend to call shopogolizm disease, ie, give him medical status. Shopping can bring a person greater range of positive emotions, joy, excite interest, forming in this enduring relationship, which is a temporary substitute for human happiness. Neurophysiological study shopogolizma revealed some interesting data which show that when selecting the product and its acquisition of women covered by the emotions, the rational mind is practically turned off. Why women are highly susceptible to oniomania? The answer is simple. A woman in great need of feelings and emotions, as opposed to a more rational men. And the woman gets the emotions, though not in relation to man, and to things and their environment performance. Need for women to experience strong positive emotions, is satisfied in making purchases. So shopogolizm is infinitely lasting affect, which ends with the termination of money. In the state of the shopping affect the person constantly feels the urge to buy. Until the shopping, attending lengthy preparation - gathering information on sales, new stores, a lot of empty talk about shopping. At the time of purchase, the woman is deprived of the chief - the ability to choose rationally evaluate and criticize their purchases. The sequence of actions is replaced by impulsivity. Subsequently, inspection of his vast wardrobe leads to the conclusion that the meaningless purchases and expenses are included in the system.