Paper On Hoarding

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a pattern of recurring obsessions and compulsions that are severe enough to be time consuming and interfere with a person’s daily functioning. They must cause marked distress (such as pain or physical harm to the person) or significant impairment. Usually, they take more than

Thesis: Hoarding is seen as unhygienic and repulsive, but it is simply a disorder due to either genetics or as a coping mechanism to trauma. While it has been linked to other problems, researchers are still trying to find better treatments for the destructive habit causing emotional, physical, and legal effects.

The word hoarding was originally used to describe the behavior of animals storing food for future use, and then moved into use as a descriptor of human behavior. There are also different types of hoarders. These include Clinical compulsive hoarding, OCD or perfectionist hoarding, animal

Hoarding patients has a high rate of co-occurrence with the disorder performing an assessment is highly recommending. Professionals would want to rule out or see if there are attributable of any other medical conditions such as dementia, traumatic brain injury or alcoholism. Individuals that are diagnose with hoarding disorder needs therapy to assist with the disorder. It is important that social worker perform good assessment to provide the appropriate intervention. Hoarding disorder has many health risk that affect or incapacitate a person life and impair their functioning. There are many types of treatment for the hoarding disorder.

Lars Eighners essay “On Dumpster Diving” describes the lifestyle of living out of a dumpster. Lars demonstrates that anyone can achieve a fulfilling life without the constraints of society and material wealth. He finds nearly everything he needs and sometimes more just from the refuse of others. Firstly, what is dumpster diving? Dumpster diving is the practice of sifting through commercial or residential waste in order to obtain items one might find useful that have been discarded by their owners. Dumpster diving is largely associated with the homeless or people with little or no source of income. In January 2013, 610,042

Individuals accumulate large numbers of items hat fill up and clutter active living areas to the extent that their intended use is no longer possible (2014). We see examples of this disorder by the mountains of containers of Chinese take-out and pizza boxes and the way he stores the mutilated remains of his victims in Tupperware containers. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder was ruled out because didn’t display obsessions or compulsions

People with hoarding behavior also may be suffering from a variety of other disorders. Many hoarders have problems with anxiety, separation anxiety, and attachment disorder (HelpGuide, 2010). Someone with separation anxiety and attachment disorder feels afraid to be apart from a certain person or object or is fearful of being alone. People with these attachment disorders or other attachment problems have difficulty connecting to others and

Until a few years ago, a lady who was known to collect cats would have been called “the crazy cat lady.” Houses that were filled with endless amounts of stuff were referred to as “cluttered, filthy, or a pen sty.” As of today, those expressions have been replaced with the coined terms: “hoarder or compulsive hoarding.” What is hoarding? “Compulsive hoarding is a specific type of behavior marked by acquiring and failing to throw out a large number of items that would appear to have little or no value to others, severe cluttering of the person's home so that it is no longer able to function as a

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM V) explains the criteria for OCD. OCD is considered to be an anxiety disorder in the DSM V. Obsessions are defined as experiencing recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses and urges, and can be invasive and unasked for which then cause noticeable distress and anxiety for the individual. The individual will try to ignore the unwanted thoughts and urges or they may try to neutralise them via

A. Compulsive hoarding is a common and potentially disabling problem, characterized by the accumulation of excessive clutter, to the point that parts of one's home can no longer be used for their intended purpose

Because there was none, she became the first person to conduct a study on hoarding disorder. The study provided the first hoarding picture and also established that hoarding can run in families. A few years after this research began; two Smith students published the first theoretical account of hoarding that outlines the three dimensions of hoarding: clutter, excessive acquisitions, and difficulty discarding. Continued research about hoarding includes genetics, phenomenology, epidemiology, neuroimaging, and also how hoarding is shown in children and elders. Several Smith College students since 1993 have co- authored scientific papers on hoarding. In 2013, in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders or DSM for short, hoarding became an official mental disorder. It was considered a mental health disorder before but only a subtype of OCD. Now, because of the abundance of research that has been done and the studies that show people who display hoarding disorder had no other symptoms of OCD; hoarding has accumulated its own section in DSM.

Obsessive compulsion disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder described by irrational thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead you to do repetitive tasks (compulsions) (Obsessive Compulsion Disorder, 2013). When a person has obsessive-compulsive disorder, they may realize that their obsessions aren't accurate, and they may try to overlook them but that only increases their suffering and worry. Eventually, you feel driven to perform compulsive acts to ease your stressful feelings. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is often driven by a reason, cause, or fear for example, a fear of germs. To calm the feeling of this fear, a person may compulsively wash their hands until they're sore and chapped. Despite their efforts, thoughts of obsessive-compulsive behavior keep coming back. This leads to more ritualistic behavior and a brutal cycle of obsessive-compulsive disorder. OCD is the fourth most common mental disorder, and is diagnosed nearly as often as asthma and diabetes (Who We Are, 2012). In the United States, one in 50 adults suffers from OCD. Obsessive compulsive disorder affects children, adolescents, and adults. About one third to one half of adults with OCD report a childhood onset of the disorder, they felt these anxieties but were not diagnosed or felt no need to be diagnosed until the compulsions over whelmed them (Who We Are, 2012). The phrase obsessive compulsive has been used to describe excessively meticulous, perfectionistic, absorbed, or otherwise fixated person. While

In today’s society, there is an abundance of waste. This is clear in observing how people live, we often throw out items because we want something better. Lars Eighner, author of "On Dumpster Diving," writes about his experiences being homeless and how he survived on the waste of others. This provides insight on how the phrase "one man's trash is another man's treasure," is true. Jeremy Seifert, who directed the documentary Dive!, also talks about how he survives off of other people's waste, but this was a decision he made. As they tell of their experiences, Seifert and Eighner both come to the conclusion that society is wasteful. While both individuals provided good information, I believe Seifert presented the better argument. Both of

Compulsive Hoarding Have you ever seen a house with so much stuff in the yard that you thought, “Wow, that’s a lot of junk on that porch or in that yard?” Years ago, one would have considered the house as junky, cluttered or filthy. However, today this type of scene would remind you of the reality television show, Hoarders.

Hoarding is defined as the acquirement of, and inability to discard worthless items even though they appear to have no value. Hoarding behaviors can occur in a variety of psychiatric disorders and in the normal population, but are most commonly found in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Those people who report compulsive hoarding as their primary type of OCD, who experience significant distress or functional impairment from their hoarding, and who also have symptoms of indecisiveness, procrastination, and avoidance, are classified as having compulsive hoarding syndrome (www.ocfoundation.com). An estimated 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States are thought to have compulsive hoarding syndrome.