Cassie O’Neill
Hoarding Disorder
Brookdale Community College
HESC 105 Medical Terminology
Before introducing my topic of hoarding disorder, Id like to say that most people tend to collect various items that match their interest. However, hoarders are considered to the extremists. The avid collectors are mostly proud of their possessions and tend to demonstrate them. Yet, it should be remembered the line between collecting and hoarding is rather blurred, especially, at an early age. Hoarding is considered to be a special condition that usually limits a human’s ability to function in daily life. Followed by unfavorable consequences, hoarding, by all means, should be diagnosed and treated on the basis of the personal symptoms and causes.
In fact, “hoarding disorder is a persistent difficulty discarding or part with possessions because of a perceived need to save them” (“Hoarding disorder, 2014). A person suffering from hoarding disorder is likely to experience distress when getting rid of the particular items regardless of their value. The behavior of a hoarder mostly has a pernicious effect such as physical, emotional, social, legal, and financial distress on a person. Hoarding disorder may be “mild” and “severe.” (“Hoarding disorder, 2014) Some of the hoarders suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, social anxiety, and depression (Compulsive hoarding, 2013). Yet, it should be remembered that these disorders might not overlap. Moreover, people affected by hoarding disorder do no consider it to be a problem. Thus, the treatment turns out to be rather challenging.
One of the basic symptoms of hoarding disorder is an inability of the person to part with his or her possessions. The discarding of the personal item causes distress (Frost, 2012). In addition, a constant accumulation of unneeded things results in clutter. It is very difficult for a hoarder to organize their possessions. From the neurological viewpoint, hoarders face problems sustaining attention. Psychologists claim that hoarding proves to be a cause of “clinically significant distress” and “impairment” in various areas of human’s function (Grohol, 2014). In other words, people affected by hoarding are embarrassed by their possessions. What is more, they tend to be suspicions when other people touch their items. Hoarders have problems with socializing as well. In the long run, hoarding leads to alienation from family and friends.
Apparently, there are plenty of potential hoarding causes. Nevertheless, scientists tend to define a painful experience and an emotional inability to make a decision concerning personal possessions to be the crucial ones. Talking about a traumatic and stressful life events, it is worth mentioning that a person suffering from hoarding may have been deprived of a particular item by force in the past. What is more, a person could have been physically roughly handled or might have experienced forced sexual activity or forced intercourse. Moreover, an individual may have lived through a period of poverty or hardship. (Frost, 2014, p.27). The accumulation of unneeded items is intended to fill the emotional gulf left by the traumatic event. IN this manner, hoarders manage the constant feeling of pain.
To add, plenty of people with hoarding problems have a poor memory. All the objects they own are likely to be associated with a particular life event that is excessively important to the hoarder. Hence, why they experience the fear that the forgetting of the particular event will follow discarding a certain object.
Hoarding is also caused by an inability to make a choice concerning one’s own possessions. To be more precise, when asked to take a decision about one’s own items, hoarders experience a “spike in activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and the left insular cortex” (Pappas, 2012). The process of making decisions about their own things sends theses areas into overdrive. Yet,
