More than 70% of hoarders are women, many are elderly, and recidivism is nearly universal. Some hoarders are sociopaths indifferent to the concerns or needs of either people or animals, driven by a need to accumulate and control animals. Sometimes the hoarder calls her collection a shelter or animal refuge.
If you hoard things, you might feel very worried about making mistakes – also known as perfectionism. You might also find it hard to make decisions, plan ahead or work out how to do tasks. These could be possible reasons why some of us are more vulnerable to hoarding.
A hoarder can be neurotypical, but narcissistic-ish within the context of the hoarding. That is, normal, loving, empathetic, etc. as long as the hoarding isn't involved. But if you try to talk to them about the hoarding, in that one area, they behave like a narcissist would.
Significant hoarding can put individuals who hoard and their family members at serious risk of heath problems, injury, removal of at-risk children or older adults from the home, homelessness or in the worst case, even death.
If you feel that someone's hoarding behaviour is presenting an immediate risk to themselves or others you should report this to the Adult Soial Care team by raising a safeguarding concern.
Don't refer to their possessions as 'junk' or 'rubbish'. This shows that you don't understand their connection to the objects or why they want to keep them. They will be less likely to open up to you if you talk about their things this way. Don't focus on a total clean-up.
Parents might feel glued to their "stuff." But hoarding can become child abuse. Children growing up with an alcoholic parent may feel neglected. When they get older, they may be furious that they had to live with a shameful secret.
Hoarding usually starts around ages 15 to 19. It tends to get worse with age. Hoarding is more common in older adults than in younger adults.
Many factors may play a role, including personality traits and stressful life events. It is important to rule out dementia, depression and other mental health conditions that may be contributing to their hoarding behaviors.
Without proper education, it is easy for people to assume that hoarders are merely “dirty” or “lazy.” In fact, these individuals may be suffering from trauma-related psychological pain and may require treatment by a mental health professional.
Those most often associated with hoarding are obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and depression.
They just won't find their way out. It's for these reasons, in part, that hoarding is extremely difficult to treat. And hoarding is almost always accompanied by a comorbid condition--depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder are among the most common--which complicates matters even further.
He described hoarding as a symptom in advanced schizophrenia where patients collect useful as well as useless objects and store these objects in their homes so they can hardly move around. The American psychiatrist Silvano Arieti [2] was very interested in hoarding as a symptom of schizophrenia.
Conclusions: Hoarding symptoms are associated with increased emotional contagion and decreased cognitive empathy. Empathy may be an avenue for understanding and treating interpersonal difficulties in hoarding disorder.
Touching Items Without Permission: Hoarders have an unnatural attachment to the things that they have gathered. If a person tries to move the possessions without the hoarder's consent, the hoarder can become emotionally upset or angry.
Hoarders generally experience embarrassment about their possessions and feel uncomfortable when others see them. Their clutter often takes over functional living space, and they feel sad or ashamed after acquiring additional items.
Hoarding disorder is a mental health problem that a doctor can diagnose. But you might also experience hoarding as part of another mental or physical health problem. If you hoard, you might: Feel the need to get more things, even if you have a lot already.
Hoarders often endure a lifelong struggle with hoarding. They tend to live alone and may have a family member with the problem.
As with most mental health disorders, hoarding disorder is a lifelong condition. However, the hoarding outlook doesn't have to be daunting. With treatment and the incorporation of coping mechanisms, someone with hoarding disorder can remain in recovery and feel comfortable in their home.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin/norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) are most commonly used to treat hoarding disorder. A recent meta-analysis shows that treatment response to pharmacotherapy is similar to the response in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Self-neglect covers a wide range of behaviour which in general means someone is not caring for their own personal hygiene, health, safety or surroundings. It can also include hoarding behaviour, although not always. Hoarding can involve specific things, very general items, or animals – even data can be hoarded!
Research shows that while many people who are compulsive hoarders have attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD), the reverse is not true. People with ADD are not typically hoarders. Nor are they on some kind of disorganization spectrum that ends up in the mental disorder called hoarding.
People with hoarding disorder have persistent difficulty getting rid of or parting with possessions due to a perceived need to save the items. Attempts to part with possessions create considerable distress and lead to decisions to save them.