Men also shop till they drop, study finds

PSYCHIATRY
About one in 20 people in the United States may be ``spendaholics," according to a new study by Stanford University Medical Center researchers. And contrary to common belief, men are nearly as likely as women to burn credit cards to the limit -- splurging on unnecessary items on impulse and regretting it later. Prior to this study, volunteers for clinical trials on impulse buying were primarily women, which led to the view that binge spending was almost exclusive to females, said Lorrin Koran, the study's lead author and a psychiatry professor at Stanford. Researchers conducted about 2,500 telephone interviews with adults nationwide in 2004. Results revealed that 6 percent of women and 5.8 percent of men surveyed have compulsive buying disorder. They shop on impulse to feel better and then suffer consequences including financial hardship, family conflict, depression, and other self-destructive issues. People earning under $50,000 a year were more likely than higher-income earners to have the disorder, and younger people were more vulnerable.

BOTTOM LINE: Men are just as likely as women to shop uncontrollably.

CAUTIONS: The findings are based on survey data, not actual interviews, so respondents' answers may have been inaccurate or exaggerated. The study was funded by an unrestricted educational grant from Forest Pharmaceuticals Inc., which makes and distributes drugs to treat anxiety, depression and hypertension, and Koran sits on the company's speaker's bureau.

WHAT'S NEXT: Koran said that his team would like to do a follow-up study to find out if the people who seemed to have the compulsive buying condition have other impulse disorders and if there are different forms of compulsive shopping disorders.

WHERE TO FIND IT: The American Journal of Psychiatry, October.

DIANNE FINCH