Dr. April Benson
Compulsive Buying Specialist
April Lane Benson, Ph.D., is a nationally known psychologist who specializes in the treatment of compulsive buying disorder. She has been in private practice in New York City for over 25 years.Co-founder of the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia, the oldest outpatient eating disorders clinic in New York, Dr. Benson is also a faculty member, supervisor, and executive committee member there. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy.
I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self (Aronson, 2000), Dr. Benson's edited book, takes a multidisciplinary approach to the problem of compulsive buying. It includes contributions from the fields of sociology, consumer behavior, marketing, community education, psychology, and psychiatry. "Treatment of Compulsive Buying," her chapter in Addictions: A Practical Handbook (Wiley, 2004), reviews the forms of treatment that are currently available for compulsive buying disorder and suggests the most effective way to formulate a treatment plan. Dr. Benson's forthcoming book, Stopping Overshopping, will be based upon the successful, research-based 12-week treatment program that she and her associates created in 2004.
Dr. Benson has appeared widely in the media. Her most recent television appearances were on "CNN,""Good Morning America," the "Today Show," "ABC News Now," "BBC World Business Report," and "Retirement Living." Recent radio interviews were heard on "Marc Sussman's Money Message" on Air America, "The Peter Walsh Show" on Oprah and Friends radio, "The Jean Chatzky Show" on Oprah and Friends Radio, "Body and Soul" on NPR in Sweden, "The Business Shrink," "Your Turn," "Money Scope," and "Love and Money," on XM Satellite radio. Quoted in The New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Toronto Star, she has also been referenced in Money Magazine, Kiplinger Personal Finance, Simple Living, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook,Marie Claire, and a variety of internet publications.
Dr. Benson has taught therapists at a number of postgraduate institutes and college counseling centers about compulsive buying and its treatment. She offers an online course, I Shop Therefore I Am: Understanding and Treating Compulsive Buying. For details go to www.PsyBC.com and a thirteen-week training seminar for therapists who want to learn about the treatment model that Dr. Benson uses. She maintains a private practice in New York City where she works with individuals and small groups and does educational coaching for stopping overshopping by telephone with overshoppers around the country. The Stopping Overshopping Program is now available as an individual guided self-help program. Click on the picture of the program below for more details.
Dr. Benson graduated cum laude from Barnard College, Columbia University, and has earned a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Ferkauf Graduate School, Yeshiva University. She holds post-graduate certificates in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis from the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy, in the Treatment of Eating Disorders from the Center for the Study of Anorexia and Bulimia, and in Spirituality and Psychotherapy from the Blanton-Peale Institute for Pastoral Counseling.
For therapist training information, go to www.stoppingovershopping.com/therapistcourse.htm
Get more information on Dr. April Benson's book!
Get more information on Dr. April Benson's Overshopping Program!
For more information please visit www.stoppingovershopping.com