Sunday, October 28, 2001		Article

Shop until you drop might be a therapy
Damodar Agrawal

IS shopping good for health or is it a disease we must call deadly? According to an article in an American journal, shopping as a therapy has been successfully tried on women suffering from depression. After shopping, the pulse-rate and blood pressure of women become normal, as it boosts their ego and creates adrenaline essential for feel-good sensations.

The study was based on the survey of women of prosperous families in the USA and cannot be applied to Indian women. Nothing was said about women who feel depressed after spending their money. Researchers in the USA believe that after a woman is depressed for want of activity, she should be sent out to buy things. This will ‘tune her in’ and make her feel normal.

They describe shopping as a ‘tool for survival’, an essential pre-requisite for mental health. The more they stress out, the better they feel. In India, the average middle class woman has to be content with window shopping, since her purchasing power is limited and this only creates self-pity.

The advocates of ‘shopping therapy’ give a variety of reasons to support their view. Accordingly, when a woman freaks out while shopping, she feels free from restrictions. This is as good as any other muscle-relaxing exercise. It increases and preserves in her body chemistry, a hormone good for her emotional well-being.

Psychiatrists who believe shopping to be a ‘healing plant’ for mental disorders quote examples of patients thus totally cured. They advise the husbands to take their wives to department stores and let them buy the things they desire.

As opposed to this school of thought, many believe shopping is a deadly disease to which cash-rich women of the metros are more prone. The so-called discount sales lay a trap, but television commercials and the status symbol of internet shopping are more alluring and inviting.

There is no dearth of women who dash off to Hong Kong and Singapore for their shopping bonanzas. They keep abreast of the latest happening palaces of shopping paradises in London, Paris and New York.

This addiction is not easily curable. Around 2 million people in UK and 15 million in the USA are afflicted by this addiction. Psychologists describe them as ‘oniomaniacs’. They spend fortunes to indulge their whims and then land in debts. Many are recorded to have had strokes.

Compulsive shoppers treat the shopping mall as a religious place and talk about their ‘pilgrimage’ with great gusto. Gushing over their bargaining capabilities, they parade their purchases before their neighbours and feel satisfied.

Are they really satisfied? Perhaps not, because when their friends have left and gone, they (once again) feel depressed and abandoned. It is at such moments that they have fits of remorse and fear of the future. Some patients may indulge in shouting, shrieking, crying and vandalism.

This is wrong to believe that if you are a great shopper you will be taken to be a great person, or your social status will rise. If it boosts your ego for a while, it is certainly not worth the amount that you pay for it. It may also result in a strained relationship between you and your well-wishers.

Even though it is an addiction, you can easily de-addict yourself by making your shopping need-oriented. A way out of the malaise is to develop an attitude in which there is no place for a rat-race to upmarket shopping plazas.