April Lane Benson, PhD, 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 30 years.

I Shop, Therefore I Am: Compulsive Buying and the Search for Self (Aronson, 2000), Dr. Benson’s edited book, is 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.

Stopping Overshopping, a comprehensive program to help eliminate compulsive buying, was created by Aprl Benson and was launched in July 2006. She offers individual and group coaching, both in person and on the telephone, trains therapists who want to develop expertise in working with overshoppers, and speaks to professional and non-professional audiences.

Dr. Benson has appeared widely in the media, most recently in the just-released documentary “What Would Jesus Buy?”, on the “Today Show”, “Good Morning America”, the CBS Evening News, and Oprah and Friends radio. Quoted in The New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers, she has also been referenced in Time, Money, Kiplinger Personal Finance, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Harper's Bazaar, Redbook, Marie Claire, and a variety of internet publications. The February, 2008 issue of Ladies Home Journal will feature her work in the monthly column Can This Marriage Be Saved?