Hoarding Disorder is characterized by persistent difficulty in discarding or departing with items regardless of their type or value. Individuals with Hoarding Disorder have a strong need to save items even if they are causing living difficulties.
Diagnostic Criteria
Individuals with Hoarding Disorder collect, steal items they do not need even if they don’t have space to put them in. The hoarding causes clinically significant distress or social anxiety. When confronted with reasons for hoarding, they give reasons for later use or aesthetic value.
- Difficulty in discarding or parting: individuals with Hoarding Disorder have persistent difficulty in parting with possessions regardless of their value or use.
- Here the persistent implies long-standing symptoms, not just lifestyle changes like moving to a new city or earning more money.
- Fear of losing information is also common. They hoard newspapers, magazines, books from decades, old bags, notes, etc
- Cluttering the space: This implies that individuals possess a large number of items that fill the living space at the house or office and make them difficult to work or sleep in that space.
- Here space implies the active living working areas rather than garbage bins, backyard, or attics.
- Hoarding Distress: Individuals with Hoarding Disorder intentionally possess the items and experience distress when discarding these items.
Risk factors:
- Individuals with Hoarding Disorder live in cluttered, unsanitary environments
- They do not clean unless someone (family members or friends) intervenes.
- Experience distress and social anxiety
- Associated symptoms include:
- Indecisiveness
- Avoidance
- Procrastination
- difficulty planning
- distractability
OCD vs Hoarding Disorder
Hoarding disorder is not diagnosed when items are hoarded due to obsessions or compulsions.
| Hoarding Disorder | OCD |
|---|---|
| Items are possessed or hoarded due to excessive need to possess. | Items are possessed due to fears of contamination, harm, or incompleteness. |
| Individuals with hoarding disorder experience distress but also take pleasure in possessing objects. | Individuals with OCD experiece high distress and anxiety and do not take pleasure or reward in hoarding. |
| Excessive acquisition is always present. | Excessive acquisition is not always present. |
| Accumulate magazines, books, used objects, large number of animals, and inanimate objects. | Accumulate bizarre items like feces, urine, nails hair, or rotten food. |
Word from PsychHelp
Quality of life in people with hoarding disorder is often low. They suffer from anxiety, poor physical health, and occupational impairment. The acquisitions make individuals and family difficult to move around and put then at high risk of falling and fire. This puts family relationships at great risk.
First symptoms of hoarding disorder emerge as early as 11 years old. By mid 20’s this disorder becomes clinically significant and impairing everyday life of the individual. Hoarding symptoms begin in children and adolescents as discarding objects at that point in life is not in their hands. Having parents who do not discard on time and keep accumulating objects of children may cause hoarding in children. Once the symptoms start, hoarding becomes chronic.