Hoarding Reality

Hoarding reality shows may make for good TV, but hoarding makes for miserable families. Until the last 15-20 years very little research has been done on what is now being office called a disorder. Reflecting the new thinking produced by the more recent research hoarding disorder has been added to the newest diagnostic manual - the DSM-V. (Butcher-Hooley & Mineka, pg 206) Often hoarding is presented as people who have just 'given up', or people who can't let go, or can't buy 'just one' of anything. There are your junk hoarders -the ones who cannot NOT brake for garage sales, trash on the side of the road, or dumpsters. There are the 'shopping hoarders', the 'collectors', the 'food hoarders', the 'trash hoarders', and the cat or dog hoarders. Surprisingly people living with a compulsive hoarding disorder hoard ordinary, not often considered collectable, items. It is not unusual for hoarders to amass mounds and pounds - over time - of items most of us would discard as a regular course of life. Things like garbage, kinds and types of paper not limited to newspapers and junk mail, plastic shopping bags, cardboard and Christmas wrapping paper. Found in hoarders homes in nearly every nook and cranny are plastic containers, clothing items or even a refrigerator or freezer (or multiples) of rotten, out-of-date food items. There are some hoarders so severely entrenched in this disorder they hoard something that seems repulsive and vile to most - human feces. We see or read about them
This paper will offer observations and information regarding the etiology of hoarding, consider the criteria for diagnosing this disorder, and debate the differential diagnosis. It will go on to propose both secular and Christian treatment options and conclude with a hoarders prognosis for living a more ordered life. Watch your