Most people waffle back-and-forth about discarding something they sincerely believe may come in handy. This indecision usually involves a keepsake of sorts, an object that’s not terribly valuable but memorable, nonetheless. A serious problem, however, arises when individuals cannot separate themselves from an inanimate object because they believe it will occupy a vital place in their lives. Experts contend this irrational belief may give rise to hoarding.
The psychiatric community identifies hoarding as an aspect of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Hoarders truly believe that mundane items such as newspapers, plasticware or coat hangers may come in handy or, even, become valuable. While it’s common for news buffs to save old magazine covers that mark seminal events, hoarders save practically anything, from an old vacuum cleaner bag to an empty egg carton. They fear, “What if I need them one day?”
What if I need them one day?
The Anxiety and Depression Association of America characterizes hoarding as “persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.” This behavior is said to have varied deleterious effects—emotional, physical, social, financial and even legal—for the hoarder, family members, friends and neighbors. The sheer quantity of items hoarders collect distinguish them from other people. News reports arise occasionally about people, most often residing alone, who have collected decades of useless items to which they’re grown emotionally attached.
In addition to hoarding because they believe an item will be useful or valuable in the future, obsessive collectors also hoard because they believe an item is too big of a bargain to throw away. They may also hold on to the object to jog their memories, for fear that without the item, they won’t remember an important person or event. Sometimes the hoarder can’t decide where something belongs and will rationalize that “… it’s better just to keep it.”
Mental health experts often contend that hoarding may align with problems related to emotional attachment. These “attachments” may be sentimental in that the physical possessions still function as meaningful past events. Such “behavioral avoidance,” according to the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, may relate to the anxiety hoarders have about making decisions or connecting to their feelings of loss or grief. Recovering hoarders face the tremendous task of sorting through and removing years of accumulated clutter that represent their unfelt emotions.
Animals can be innocent victims
The hoarder follows a false belief system rooted in emotional attachment to possessions and the “safety” such possessions provide. These individuals also feel an impulse to “protect” these items and believe their self-worth lies in not throwing anything away. Experts say they believe when hoarders mistakenly discard an object, they’re no longer perfect, they believe, but “failures.”
Hoarding is not a victimless impulse. Quite often, this practice ensnares innocent animals in an individual’s mental disorder. The Humane Society of the United States reports that between 700 and 2,000 cases of animal hoarding cases arise each year. Last year, authorities in Santa Ana found Rita Corpin, 71, lifelessly sitting in a chair in her front yard surrounded by debris. About 30 cats were found on the deceased woman’s property, and another 20 at her second home. A neighbor near the second property said Corpin would stop by daily to feed the cats, “… but would never go into the house.”
It took the authorities three hours to clear the rubbish and remove Corpin’s body from the front yard. “There was so much garbage and debris that she was, in fact, sleeping in her truck because she couldn’t get into the house,” said Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna.
Corpin had taught history for 40 years in the Garden Grove Unified School District and also served on the Santa Ana Planning Commission. Neighbors described her as “eccentric and terribly lonely.” While attending a Thanksgiving dinner event at the Honda Center in 2012, Corpin told ABC 7 that she found holidays difficult.
Her boyfriend died 15 years before she did and “… that’s when she really went off the edge and started the collecting, and the hoarding got worse,” said John Alexander, a former coworker.
Television sheds light
Television shows such as TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive” and A&E’s “Hoarding” have given the issue of hoarding greater visibility in recent years. “Buried in Treasures” author David Tolin has taken an in-depth look at the disorder and says that more people hoard than once believed. Hoarders go beyond the “crazy cat lady” or eccentric senior down the block who, possibly as a child during the Great Depression, vowed to never again be without life’s necessities.
“In researching the book, we found that anywhere from 2 to 5 percent of Americans may meet the criteria for being hoarders,” Tolin explained. “Panic disorder might affect 1 percent and obsessive-compulsive disorder, maybe 2 percent.”
Tolin said that many people delight in amassing figurines, travel mementos or post cards. At first glance, they may appear to have gone “overboard,” but such individuals actually have a useful purpose for these items. This practice doesn’t constitute hoarding. “But if the habit of collecting items results in the person no longer being able to, say, cook meals, maintain personal hygiene … if they can’t live safely in their own home or if they’re a threat to others, that’s where we’d say it crosses a line,” Tolin said.
He also discussed how hoarding and collecting differ. “Collectors will deliberately search out specific items, categorize them, and carefully display their collections,” he said. “Collections aren’t usually cluttered, and they don’t cause the distress and impairments that are part of hoarding disorder.”
The Mayo Clinic last year released findings from a study on hoarding that indicated the disorder may begin at an early age—about 11 to 15 years old—and worsen over the years. The study found that even young children may start saving items (broken toys, old school assignments), but the disorder remains far more common among adults. Specifically, many adults with hoarding disorder exhibit indecisiveness, and stressful life events, such as a death in the family or losing possessions in a fire, may lead to hoarding. Social isolation also plays a role, with some individuals finding comfort in hoarding because they’re lonely.
Hoarding versus ‘collecting’
The Mayo Clinic report went on to identify early signs of hoarding disorder that may be confused with a person being a sloppy housekeeper or an eccentric “collector.” Among these signs are countertops, sinks, stoves, desks, stairways and virtually all other surfaces stacked with stuff. When room runs out inside, the clutter spreads to the garage, vehicles and yard. Hoarders maintain an excessive attachment to possessions, so much so that they hesitate to let others borrow, comment on or even touch their belongings. Practically all hoarders, the Mayo Clinic found, keep stacks of old newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and junk mail, reasoning that the information contained may prove useful at a later date or trigger a fond memory related to specific news items or announcements.
Michael Tompkins, Ph.D., and co-author of “Digging Out: Helping Your Loved One Manage Clutter, Hoarding and Compulsive Acquiring,” revealed why hoarders collect objects others see as trivial, or even trash. “They’d feel a sense of major loss, if they had to throw this stuff away,” he wrote. Also, Tompkins stated there is a sense that many items have an intrinsic value “… like others might see in artwork or driftwood.” And because practically all hoarders believe something might be useful someday, Tompkins said they are compelled to save far more than “… the drawer of hinges, thumbtacks, string and rubber bands” that many non-hoarders keep.
The Mayo Clinic study revealed that roughly 15 percent of hoarders know that their behavior is irrational, with 50 percent of these persons harboring an extreme desire to get items for free. About 50 percent of hoarders pick up the habit from family members. Some of the traits most common to hoarders include impulsiveness, vulnerability, neuroticism, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, indecisiveness and self-consciousness. The Mayo Clinic study also revealed that up to 40 percent of hoarders suffer from OCD.
Detailed study at UCLA
UCLA operates an Obsessive Compulsive Disorders Treatment Program that targets hoarding and other problems related to “detachment inability.” These issues include difficulties with information processing, erroneous beliefs about and attachment to possessions, emotional distress associated with discarding possessions, and avoidance behaviors that make discarding possessions stressful. According to UCLA, cluttered living and work spaces often result in the area being unusable. Hoarders also have trouble returning items they borrow, which may result in actual theft, if the hoarder keeps the item for long enough. Hoarders come to believe that they rightfully own other people’s belongings.
Karron Maidment, OCD Treatment Program coordinator at UCLA, said that hoarders fail to recognize how unmanageable their habit has become.
“Hoarding prevents the use of the home for specific purposes,” Maidment explained. “The hoarder will … become very protective of their surroundings.”
Few people will enter the hoarder’s domain, be they relatives or close friends, she continued. Maidment added that the typical person may confuse ordinary clutter with hoarding, but there’s a difference: Hoarders commonly have stacks of newspapers and magazines and will not discard them until they have fully read and comprehended their contents.
“That’s part of the OCD,” Maidment said. “Most people will read the paper and put it down. The hoarder often must read an article to perfection and if they don’t fully comprehend the subject or they believe an aspect of the subject may be missing, they will simply keep the paper as a resource. We study this as a distinct brain anomaly of the hoarder. They are not bad people, but rather, they are perfectionists. Part of them is aware of the problem, but another part of them does not recognize it when they see it.”
Maidment said something as common as a photograph of their present surroundings can make the hoarder take steps toward change, “… provided they allow someone access to photograph,” she said. “Sometimes when they see a photo—the outside world looking in—they will realize the dire situation and will seek help.”
For more information about hoarding, call the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health at (800) 854-7771.
