For Therapists

• Training
• Supervision, Workshops, and Courses
• Online Course for Mental Health Professionals
• Seminars for College and University Counseling

12-Session Training

This 12-session course prepares you to work with compulsive buyers, either as a primary therapist, or as a member of a treatment team. In the course, we carefully follow two or three clients—one of them a member of our group—as they make their way through the program set forth in To Buy or Not to Buy: Why We Overshop and How to Stop. You learn not only to successfully address the symptoms of overbuying, but also how to foster a genuine shift in perspective.

In addition to our primary text, other relevant clinical and theoretical readings will further expand your thinking and your likelihood of success in working with overshopping clients.

To learn more about the training and to be notified when the next training begins, click here.

To read testimonials from therapists who have taken this training, click here.

4-Session Training

To Buy or Not to Buy:
Theory and Treatment of Compulsive Buying Disorder

A 4-session interactive telecourse
for mental health professionals
taught by Dr. April Benson

The course begins with a thorough introduction to “affluenza” or compulsive buying disorder. We explore the culture of consumption that gives rise to it and the high price of materialism. We look at the professional unease that’s not uncommon in working with overshoppers. We then focus on the etiology, assessment, diagnosis, comorbidity, and function of this increasingly global problem. We continue with a survey of the forms of treatment and treatment adjuncts known to be effective with overshoppers, and focus in on specific tools and strategies. Finally, we take a close look at two basic and seminal questions: What is shopping? and What are we really shopping for?

Educational Objectives:

Through readings and class discussion, you learn what compulsive buying is, how our culture supports it, what forms the disorder takes, how to assess and diagnose it, and what its various functions are. Additionally, you learn how to determine when intervention is necessary and what forms of effective treatment and treatment adjuncts are available, whether or not you personally choose to do the focused, structured work so necessary for recovery from this problem. You'll be introduced to a variety of important tools, techniques, and strategies for working with compulsive buyers and learn how to integrate them into ongoing treatment. Finally, we'll deconstruct the shopping process and untie the knot that binds shopping and buying so tightly together so that you can help overshoppers find out what they’re really shopping for and how to get that.

To learn more about the training and to be notified when the next training begins, click here.

To read testimonials from therapists who have taken this training, click here.

Supervision, Workshops, and Courses

The prevalence of compulsive buying is increasing and clinicians are seeing more and more people with buying problems. Dr. Benson is available for in-person or telephone supervision with therapists who want help with current clients or want to begin working with compulsive buyers. She is also available to teach therapists about the treatment of compulsive buying and will tailor course material to suit the individual needs of the interested organization or group.

To learn more about the variety of treatment methods currently being used with this population, click here.

Online Course for Mental Health Professionals

Dr. Benson teaches an on-line course for mental health professionals, I Shop, Therefore I Am: Understanding and Treating Compulsive Buying, through PsyBC.com. Continuing education credits are available. The course begins with an exploration of the sociocultural context of "affluenza" or "luxury fever" or "aspendicitis," a few of the tongue-in-cheek coinages for our modern-day plagues of materialism and consumption in the global buyosphere. We look at the poverty of affluence, the paradox of progress, the paradox of choice, and the predominantly inverse relationship between a materialistic value orientation and subjective well being. Next, we look at how compulsive buying is an attempt to solve intrapsychic, interpersopnal and existential dilemmas.Then we turn our attention to the etiology, assessment, diagnosis, comorbidity, forms, function, and psychodynamics of compulsive buying. Finally, we look in depth at the important clinical issues raised by this population, at the various forms of effective treatment, and at important treatment adjuncts that can magnify the gains of counseling or therapy. Clinical examples and specific tools and strategies for helping to eliminate problem buying behavior will be provided throughout. There will be an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with Dr. Benson at any time during the course. For registration information, click here.

Seminars for College and University Counseling Centers

Compulsive buying is a serious problem among college aged students, where it is almost twice as prevalent as in older adults. Indeed, the aggressive marketing of credit cards to college students is now considered a bigger problem on campuses than alcoholism and sexually transmitted diseases. Debt has been linked to suicide in a number of recent cases. Dr. Benson has spoken to mental health clinicians at the Furman Counseling Center at Barnard College about compulsive buying in college students and would be happy to speak to the mental health staffs at other college and university counseling centers.