Mental Health Professionals Take Fresh Look At Compulsive Hoarding

The Chicago Tribune /Premium Health News Service (1/11) discussed compulsive hoarding, a condition in which people acquire and accumulate “objects of dubious value (to others) in such large and disorderly quantities that their living space is filled and normal use of the home becomes dangerous or impossible.”

Now, “mental health professionals are…taking a fresh look at the problem and have proposed making ‘hoarding disorder’ a distinct category in the diagnostic manual used by psychiatrists,” the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association. “Until now, hoarding has been classified psychiatrically as a symptom affecting up to 20 percent of people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).”

However, “more than 80 percent of hoarders lack the compulsions and repetitive behaviors that characterize OCD, and sometimes hoarding becomes a problem for a person with no psychiatric illness (as currently defined) or psychiatric history.”

Posted in In The News.