Short CommunicationPathological buying and partnership status
Introduction
Pathological buying (PB) is characterized by extreme preoccupation with shopping and strong urges to buy resulting in repetitive, uncontrolled purchasing of consumer goods (McElroy et al., 1994). The maladaptive spending serves as a way to deal with negative feelings and low self-esteem (Müller et al., 2012). In the long run, PB contributes to the exacerbation or the de novo development of psychiatric comorbidity, indebtedness, and family stress (Müller et al., 2015).
Although PB is typically considered an individual phenomenon, it often occurs in an interpersonal context which can both impact and be impacted by PB. According to our clinical experience, many patients report relationship discord that contributes to PB. Given the centrality that intimate relationships have in the lives of most people as well as the strong association between relationship functioning and individual well-being and mental health (Whisman and Baucom, 2012), it seems necessary to consider both relationship and psychopathology simultaneously. In a large population-based sample the co-occurrence between psychopathology and relationship discord was found for a range of disorders, including depression, schizophrenia or obsessive-compulsive disorder (Whisman, 2007). There is also evidence that relationship discord may increase the risk for substance use disorders (Whisman et al., 2006) and contributes to couple difficulties in gambling disorder (e.g. anger, blame, loss of trust) (Bertrand et al., 2008) possibly leading to separations (Abbott et al., 1995). In contrast, relationship factors such as enhanced intimacy and help by partner in developing coping strategies may have a buffering effect, for example on depressive symptoms (Barbato and D’Avanzo, 2008).
Population-based studies including male and female participants did not report a link between marital status and the diagnosis of PB (Koran et al., 2006, Müller et al., 2010, Otero-López and Villardefrancos, 2014). Also, a recent examination of a large shopping-specific sample (i.e. male and female shopping mall visitors) did not find an association between family status and being classified as having PB (Maraz et al., 2015). To our knowledge, no studies to date have considered PB and its association with partnership status in a clinical sample. It remains unclear if being in a couple relationship has a protective or a negative effect on PB. Therefore, this pilot study aimed at exploring the possible link between the presence or absence of a partnership and the level of PB in patients seeking treatment for PB and in a population-based sample. Since the majority of treatment-seeking patients with PB are women, this study included only female participants. While we expected to find a difference in PB severity between women with and without partnership, the direction of the assumed relationship was unclear, although we posited a protective effect.
Section snippets
Methods
We conducted a secondary analysis of data that we had collected within earlier studies: n=48 (Müller et al., 2008), n=55 (Müller et al., 2013), n=25 (Voth et al., 2014). Additionally, we included data from 29 patients who participate in an ongoing study resulting in a sample of 157 women aged between 19 and 71 years. This clinical group was compared with 1153 women within the same age range who had participated in an earlier representative study (Müller et al., 2010).
The protocols were approved
Results
Although the age range was the same in both groups (i.e. 19 to 71 years), the clinical sample was on average younger than the population-based sample (MClin=42.5, SDClin=10.9 and MPop=46.1, SDPop=14.2, df=1308, t=−3.02, p=0.003, d=0.28). This is probably due to the fact that the age distribution in the treatment-seeking sample was not representative for the German population. The percentage of women currently living with a partner was almost the same in both groups (Clin: 56.1%, Pop: 55.8%, χ2
Discussion
The results of the present pilot study suggest that women seeking treatment for PB were similarly often living with a partner as women from the general population. It appears that the presence of a couple relationship had a protective effect on PB tendencies in women from the population-based sample but not on the severity of PB in treatment seeking patients, which we found surprising. Unfortunately, no information was available about the characteristics and quality of existing partnerships.
It
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