In “Health & Science,” the Washington Post (4/11, Solovitch) delves into compulsive hoarding, a condition that “affects up to six percent of the population, or 19 million Americans, and…has been found to run in families.” More people hoard compulsively than have obsessive-compulsive disorder, “the condition under which hoarding was listed until 2013 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the bible of the American Psychiatric Association.” Hoarding is now listed as “a separate mental illness” in the DSM-5. Brain scan studies of people who hoard reveal “abnormally low activity in the anterior cingulate cortex.”
Related Links:
— “Hoarding is a serious disorder — and it’s only getting worse in the U.S.,” Sara Solovitch, Washington Post, April 11, 2016.