Hoarding-More Prevalent Than You May Think.

I ran across a couple of articles recently about hoarding.  We all have “stuff” and the older we get, the more “stuff” we may have as we accumulate a lifetime of memories. Does that mean we are hoarders? According to the article in the Washington Post, Hoarding is a serious disorder — and it’s only getting worse in the U.S.,

While the stockpiling of stuff is often pinned on America’s culture of mass consumption, hoarding is nothing new. But it’s only in recent years that the subject has received the attention of researchers, social workers, psychologists, fire marshals and public-health officials.

They call it an emerging issue that is certain to grow with an aging population. That’s because, while the first signs often arise in adolescence, they typically worsen with age, usually after a divorce, the death of a spouse or another crisis.

So you have a lot of stuff. And maybe you are disorganized (I once had someone tell me people do two kinds of organizing, some are “pilers” and others are “filers”).  Does that mean you are a hoarder? Not necessarily, according to the article, because “[h]oarding is different from merely living amid clutter, experts note. It’s possible to have a messy house and be a pack rat without qualifying for a diagnosis of hoarding behavior. The difference is one of degree. Hoarding disorder is present when the behavior causes distress to the individual or interferes with emotional, physical, social, financial or legal well-being.” 

The article offers some interesting insights into hoarding and the research (such as it runs in families) but it isn’t until recently that it’s been thought of as a brain disorder.  Not only may hoarding have lacked attention in the past, it’s one of those situations where the person may not know to seek treatment and the response requires a multi-disciplinary approach. The article has a lot of good information and is insightful in covering the issues.

Then look at this article in Huffington Post’s Post 50, 5 Signs That Someone You Love May Be A Hoarder where one expert is quoted as predicting about 4 million people in the U.S. are hoarders. “Hoarding …  is associated with a number of things including difficulty processing information, the inability to make decisions when confronted with a large amount of information and a failure to categorize things — meaning you can’t see the commonality of objects and they instead all look unique to you.” This article offers 5 signs that someone is a hoarder, including constant attendance at garage sales and swap meets, never inviting visitors to the person’s home, never giving anything away, keeping every scrap of paper and getting upset at the suggestion of discarding possessions.  Sound like anyone you may know?