Title: Why Shopping Can Be Good for Your Health | Personal Finance | US News
Headings: Why Shopping Can Be Good for Your Health
Why Shopping Can Be Good for Your Health
Feeling down? A trip to the mall might help.
Why Shopping Can Be Good for Your Health

Content: Your Month-to-Month Guide to Great Sales .] April Lane Benson, author of "I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self," says consumers must be conscious of their shopping behaviors. Although retail therapy can have positive effects, she says it can easily evolve into a spending problem. " We turn to instant gratification when we feel distressed," Benson says. Yet sometimes a quick pick-me-up is necessary. Margaret Meloy, a professor of marketing at Pennsylvania State University and co-author of the 2011 study "Retail therapy: a strategic effort to improve mood," says people must diffuse negative emotions before they worsen, or they could lose control of their shopping behaviors and act recklessly with money. Such untreated depression or frustration can push people to spending extremes. A key difference between healthy and compulsive shoppers is that compulsive buyers often experience remorse when they get home and see what they bought, Meloy says.