Monday 26 November 2007

A call for Big Pharma's - and psychiatry's - attention

In the US this "illness" has been known for quite a while. Eventually, it has also entered the Danes' conciousness: "compulsive shopping", or "shopaloholism". We can undoubtedly blame Big Pharma for the fact that this "disorder" not yet has been acknowledged as an actual "illness". What are you waiting for? Get a move on and develop a drug against this horrendous "illness"! So that it will become accepted as a valid diagnosis in the ICD, chapter V. It is simply a scandal, that people who loyally followed the advertising industry's calls for consumption, people who've become so exemplary consumers of all sorts of everyday as well as luxury goods that they themselves don't even think it's fun anymore, are doomed to completely do without the joy of consuming, just because you can't deliver the goods!

Provisionally, I recommend that psychiatry provides a temporarily solution for these poor individuals. Get the diagnosis approved! The poor shopaloholics have the right to be enabled to consume at least a diagnosis. Be sure, the pills will be put on the marked, sooner or later.

Until then, you might consider to learn from the experience with alcoholics and regard shopaloholism as one aspect of another underlying "mental illness" such as "anxiety" or "depression", and, voilĂ !, you got an approved, legitimate "illness" AND the pills to "treat" it!

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