This might be a simple experiment that you could do on yourself. Observe the moments where you just feel the urge to splurge and the moments where you just feel down and miserable? Got a correlation? Well this Seattle Times report indicates that compulsive buying might just be a disorder and that your splurges and your mood might just have something to do with it.

The ever-popular Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), that lovely tome that lays out all the recognized mental disorders currently doesn’t include compulsive buying as a disorder but that might not stick for long with the 2010 updated version. Two criteria to recognize something as a disorder is 1) causes sever impairment and 2) distress. Both can surely be accounted for by compulsive buying.

In anticipation, researchers and academic practitioners are debating what the cause of such a condition might be, how widespread it is and how best to diagnose, characterize and treat it. A decision to adopt compulsive shopping as a diagnosis would require most private and public health insurers to cover its treatment, spur new research on the phenomenon and very likely escalate what is now a modest search by pharmaceutical companies for drugs that could curb its symptoms.

And yes, misery might just have something to do with it. An experiment was done by offering subjects $10 to buy an insulated water bottle and subjecting some of them to sad stories. Those in the sad story group were prepared to spend the whole $10 for the item, at the average 4 times what the other group offered.

Via: Seattle Times