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Shoppingtherapy is just what the doctor ordered in Martinsville.
A nursing home is helping its residents cope with holiday blues by bringing the store to them.
Residents are given five fake dollars and pick up gifts like clothes, candy or soap. It's a different approach to help heal holiday depression.
The lines are long, traffic is moving slowly and the tables are stocked. Black Friday's got nothing on this shopping trip.
Julia Lucord is lucky, she got first dibs on hundreds of item for sale.
"You've got five dollars to spend. And each item is one dollar. You get five items for five bucks. So that's not bad at all," Lucord said.
That's smart shopping. She's thought long and hard about what she wants to buy. Lucord is a permanent resident here and won't be going home for Christmas.
Even though she's not supposed to have it, this candy is taking her mind off holiday depression.
"Why we started it really was to give our residents, about 300 of them, an opportunity to feel like they're part of the community. People feel like when they're in the nursing home you're kind of out of the loop We wanted to bring them back into the loop in terms of shopping," said Chris Oswald, the CEO of the nursing facility.
For just a few hours hundreds of residents shifted though piles of donated goods.
"We call them Chris bucks. It's Chris Oswald's picture on them and he's our CEO," said one nurse of the money residents are using.
Just like the real thing, residents pay the cashier and even get gifts wrapped.
"I enjoy it tremendously yes. And after I do mine I enjoy other people do theirs, I enjoy watching them," Lucord said.
Stress typcially goes hand in hand with holiday shopping.
The logic behind all this is deeper - just spending time together and searching for that perfect gift, or in Julia Lucord's case a late night snack, that takes her mind off being alone this Christmas.