HOARDING DISORDER

Hoarding Disorder occurs in approximately one third of individuals with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Hoarding behavior does not necessarily indicate the presence of a psychiatric disorder, unless it generates an overwhelming amount of clutter in a person's home and causes difficulties in their ability to carry out daily activities and to use their living space for its intended purpose.

Hoarding is often an underground behavior because of the shame felt by those whose homes become so cluttered and messy that there is often hardly any room to move around. Floors, furnishings and fixtures get buried in clutter that often impedes passage through doorways and exits, leading to health and fire hazards.

Treatment for compulsive hoarding requires a combination of office and home therapy sessions that address a hoarding person's typically distorted beliefs about possessions and associated emotional attachments to them. Treatment is additionally designed to improve a hoarding individual's sorting and organizational skills and to reduce the amount of clutter in their living space.