{"id":1118,"date":"2014-04-26T00:15:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-26T00:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/?p=1118"},"modified":"2014-04-28T16:56:18","modified_gmt":"2014-04-28T16:56:18","slug":"myths-misconceptions-about-hoarding-disorder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/2014\/04\/26\/myths-misconceptions-about-hoarding-disorder\/","title":{"rendered":"Myths & Misconceptions about Hoarding Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of a series of guest posts on GPS by the graduate students in my\u00a0Psychopathology<\/a>\u00a0course during Spring 2014. As part of their work for the course, each student had to demonstrate mastery of the skill of \u201cEducating the Public about Mental Health.\u201d To that end, each student has to prepare two 1,000ish word posts on a particular class of mental disorders, with one of those focusing on evidence-based treatments for those disorders and the other focused on a particular myth or misunderstanding about mental illness.<\/em><\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

Myths & Misconceptions about Hoarding Disorder\u00a0by Kelly Jent<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>How many of us have watched shows like Hoarding: Buried Alive<\/a> or My Strange Addiction and immediately judged the people on the show?\u00a0 Comments like \u201cEw. Look at all of that junk in their house… it\u2019s so dirty!\u00a0 How could someone live like that?!\u00a0 That\u2019s disgusting!\u201d tend to surface. \u00a0As a matter of fact, while writing this and googling different addictions, I said (to my empty house), \u201cOh, woah that\u2019s weird.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s natural to have reactions like that about something that appears so odd to many of us and something that seemingly would be so easy to fix by quitting getting new things, cleaning, stop saving, etc. \u00a0<\/b>However, these comments aren\u2019t helping anyone and are only adding to the stigma about people who having hoarding problems.<\/a>\u00a0 Speaking of stigma, a reoccurring pattern that I noticed while researching obsessive-compulsive related disorders (e.g. hoarding disorder, trichotillomania<\/a>, body dysmorphic disorder) is that the stigma surrounding them severely misrepresents the reality that the people with the disorders actually live.\u00a0 <\/b>To the uneducated, the people are \u201cfreaks\u201d or \u201cweirdos\u201d and likewise, these disorders just appear \u201cweird\u201d and are dismissed and justified as \u201cbeing glad you don\u2019t do stuff like that.\u201d\u00a0 Once disorders like hoarding become media-ized, the public assumes they know the in\u2019s and out\u2019s of what goes on; they feel that they know enough to give you the gist of the problem (which most likely consists of subjective judgments rather than empirical evidence), which is all you really need to know anyway, right?<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

There are a number of myths surrounding Hoarding Disorder<\/a> (just referred to as “hoarding” from here on out), but I think in order to know what hoarding is not, it is important to understand what hoarding actually is first.\u00a0 Hoarding is a newly recognized diagnostic category in the DSM-5 in the Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders section.\u00a0 This disorder involves difficulty parting with possessions regardless of what their actual value is.\u00a0 There is a perceived need to save possessions and distress is linked to the idea or process of discarding them, therefore, items accumulate and clutter living areas which takes away from the functionality of the space.\u00a0 The effects of hoarding must also cause significant distress or impairment in different areas of functioning (social, occupational, familial). \u00a0I stress: significant distress and impairment in functioning is a must for a diagnosis. \u00a0That being cleared up, on to the misinformation!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One common myth about a person who hoards is that they are lazy, unmotivated, selfish, or gross. This is false<\/a>.\u00a0 In fact, people who hoard ARE bothered by the clutter and dirt; they just learn to mentally block it out.\u00a0 They also feel shame and embarrassment due to their living situations.\u00a0 Studies have compared the brains of people who compulsively hoard with \u201chealthy\u201d brains and found that compulsive hoarders have decreased activity (less activation) in their anterior and posterior cingulate cortex.\u00a0 Great…but what does that mean?\u00a0 These brain areas are highly responsible for actions such as problem solving and decision making (anterior), spatial orientation, memory, and emotion (posterior).<\/a>\u00a0 Decreased activity in these areas is likely contributing to the difficulty \u00a0that people who hoard experience\u00a0in deciding what to keep and what to throw away.\u00a0 People who hoard are worried that if they discard something they may actually need it someday in the future \u2013 so they keep everything from actually valuable items to items that appear meaningless such as dozens of second-hand eyeglasses that are kept \u201cjust in case.\u201d\u00a0 With an accumulation of items comes a significant amount of impairment and distress and this is what distinguishes this disorder from regular collecting.<\/a>\u00a0 Rather than being lazy or unmotivated, individuals simply may not be as able as an average person to carry out certain tasks in order to make decisions and organize things.\u00a0 With this in mind, it is easier to understand that hoarding is largely an information processing issue.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, back to the decreased activation in the posterior cingulate.\u00a0 Many people who hoard experience extreme anxiety when being faced with having to discard items.\u00a0 This is due partly to the unique emotional relationship that they have formed with their possessions.\u00a0 For example, some individuals anthropomorphize objects. \u00a0For example, they may think that if they throw out the box that a gift came in, it would hurt the box\u2019s feelings.\u00a0 There is also an association with the memory of when they received something or an event surrounding an item.\u00a0 The lower activity in this area of the brain also governs memory and spatial orientation; they need to have things in sight in order to remember where it is.\u00a0 Individuals think that they will lose items or not remember where something is if it is not in clear view which explains the plethora of items stacked from the floor to the ceiling, covering beds and spilling over tables and counters.\u00a0 Another example is the collection of newspapers \u2013 by throwing them away, one might forget the information that is inside of them.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Finally, people who hoard are likely to show signs of other accompanying disorders.\u00a0 Depression and anxiety are the two most common co-morbid disorders.\u00a0 <\/b>Cory Chalmers <\/a>of the TLC show \u2018Hoarders\u2019 says that 80-90% of all cases that they see on the show are trauma or depression based \u2013 meaning that these other experiences trigger the hoarding behavior in individuals as a way to fill a void in their life.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, a higher level of social disability is also found in people who hoard than not.<\/p>\n

I was looking up YouTube videos to go along with this blog and decided to read the comments written about the videos to see what the general attitudes were towards the people in the videos.\u00a0 While, yes, there were some commenters who were positive and\/or sympathized for the person featured in the video, the vast majority were negative and downright ignorant and rude.\u00a0 Here are a few gems that I came across.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat isn’t hoarding she is a slob!\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s so sick. How could anyone live in there?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh please miss stop making excuses and clean up your nasty house.\u201d\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis ain’t called being a horder, this is called being a lazy bum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHoarding possessions I can go some way to understanding but the ones who sit in a pile of rubbish are just filthy pigs, that is not hoarding that is blatant slobbery and laziness.\u201d<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So\u2026 there\u2019s that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know about you, but I didn\u2019t really get warm fuzzy feelings reading those.\u00a0 The only warm feeling I got was due to my blood boiling.\u00a0 These delightful commenters perfectly illustrate why this disorder is stigmatized, and as you\u2019ve hopefully seen, these comments only reinforce the myth that hoarders are lazy, selfish, unmotivated, or gross.\u00a0 Unfortunately, with the saturation of these shows and comments in the media, I don\u2019t foresee this changing any time soon.\u00a0 However, next time you\u2019re watching a show like this, keep in mind that these individuals in fact are not merely too lazy to clean, but there is most likely other underlying issues that are exacerbating this behavior.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which we expose some misinformation bout people who hoard and help shine the light of accuracy on YouTube and cable television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,12,14,52],"tags":[81,348,530,524,525,527,526,528,31,531,482,508,18,529,345],"class_list":["post-1118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health","category-psychology","category-skepticism","category-teaching","tag-dsm","tag-etiology","tag-gross","tag-hoarder","tag-hoarders","tag-hoarding","tag-hoarding-disorder","tag-lazy","tag-mental-disorders","tag-misconception","tag-myth","tag-problems","tag-psychology-2","tag-slob","tag-symptoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1118\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/gps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}