Senior In Home Care Research Paper

OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the unwanted recurrent thoughts, actions, or impulses and repetitive behaviors and actions that a person feels driven to perform (Obsessive Compulsive Anonymous World Services, 1999). People suffering from OCD perform a variation of strange rituals everyday uncontrollably. There are different types of compulsive behavior people with OCD display. For example, hoarders fear that something bad will happen if they throw anything away or give anything away. They compulsively hoard things that they don not need or use. These victims of OCD can become obsessed with not only performing actions, but with keeping objects and possessions.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder/hoarding has always interested me. These people take collecting to an unhealthy level. Ariel is the perfect example of a Hoarder.

From light housework to laundry, senior care services will keep your loved one's home safe and looking sharp. Housekeeping is not just about picking things up, either. Sure, clean floors and fresh laundry are nice, but helping maintain a home your loved one feels good about while maximizing safety and minimizing fall hazards is even better.

As this video illustrates, eating a well-balanced diet can reduce the risk of heart disease, stroke, and type two diabetes. If your loved one already has a chronic disease, then elderly in home care can help your loved one better manage the symptoms. For example, senior care can help reduce high blood pressure, lower cholesterol and manage diabetes. Senior care can also help your loved one learn to eat better,

Hoarding can become a fire and health hazard in rentals. It can also place undue strain on the floors. Property owners either ignore the situation or give them a warning to clean up their place or be evicted. Cleaning up a situation like this can be very difficult and may need a third party involved like a family, property owners lawyer, or even the department of health to get thing moving along. It can be a very touchy situation. People that hoard can become very distressed in a cleanup situation. They become very attached to their items and having someone help them feels like an invasion of privacy to them. Also, the landlords are reluctant to involve certain people in situations like this. Some of the people they should have involved are the fire department, health inspectors, and social services. They are reluctant, because they are afraid of being cited, but this would help the tenant. They need to know of the great hazards their items are causing. They could also be accommodated with help and time. One of the most common mistakes people make is pushing the tenant to have it done quickly. It may take a couple months to get it cleaned all up. It may also take a group of people to help the tenant. The tenant knows they have a problem. They do not set a goal to be a hoarder. Often they do not know how to deal with the situation, so they need help to deal with the situation (Dobrian,

Between five million and 14 million people in the U.S. are compulsive hoarders. This recent and surprising finding is causing researchers to believe compulsive hoarding is more prevalent that they once thought. (Jabr) Some researchers might even contend that, that estimate is too low, due to the majority of hoarding cases go unrecognised and left untreated. Before the 1990’s, little to none was know about hoarding. There little record of hoarding prior to the twentieth century. (Penzel) Prehistorically, it was a way to save supplies and survive. The early Catholic Church viewed it as sinful. Hoarding was first mentioned in literature in one of Dante’s epic poems as well as other dramas. It slowly gained popularity throughout the nineteenth

The Hoarding Syndrome is characterized as the "excessive collecting and saving behaviors that result in a cluttered living space and significant distress or impairment" (Frost and Hart, 1996).  Hoarding symptoms often begin between the ages of 10-13 (Mackin, Arean, Delucchi, & Matthews, 2011) but does not "discriminate in terms of age, gender, educational levels, or socioeconomic status" (Singh & Jones, 2013). However, researchers have found a very strong association between having a family member who has a compulsive hoarder and coming a hoarder yourself (Mayo Clinic, 2014). Stressful life events, a history of alcohol abuse, and social isolation are also risk factors associated with the hoarding syndrome (Mayo Clinic, 2014).

Trash and aging go hand in hand. Take for example a pair of shoes. When a person uses a pair of shoes consistently, the soles will begin to wear down and holes begin to form. A person may repair the sole and patch up the holes, but eventually there comes a time when the well-worn shoe is beyond repair and it is time to chuck them in the trash bin. Trash is made up of things that have aged to the point of uselessness; things that have become undesired and worthless. A person can easily tell when an item is no longer of use to them, but controversy ensues when a person attempts to determine when a human being begins to lose their usefulness. Aging is a fact of life, but how a society deals with this fact varies. In today’s American consumer

Many times senior home care is provided by family members in the senior's home. However, family may not be able to provide all of the care that is required. From time constraints to job and family demands, and even physical or emotional limitations, support and assistance are often required. This is the beauty of in home care. You choose the type of support, the times it is needed, and the frequency. The in home care senior home care providers will do the rest.

Since home care service providers are focused entirely on your senior loved one, the care is personal and interactive. From walks in the park or mall to gardening, dancing, or just reminiscing with a photo album, the providers work with the medical staff and your loved one to maximize their quality of life. Beyond just care services, seniors often look forward to the visits for the social aspects of care and companionship.

Dr. Eric Hollander, director of the autism and obsessive compulsive spectrum disorder program at Montefiore/Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, specifically stated that hoarding is simply unique and that there is something striking about it. The new research that has been advancing currently suggests that hoarders have distinct elements in their brains that are triggered when they are faced with simple decision making compared to a healthy person that has no problem with decision making. Dr. Hollander also noted that this new research developed the evidence that supports that hoarding should be acknowledged as a specific syndrome that is closely related to many other disorders, including obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

Black DW, Monahan P, Gable J, et al (1998) Hoarding and treatment response in non-depressed subjects with obsessive compulsive disorder. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry ; 59:420–5.

B. When hoarding is extreme, family members and/or friends should refer an individual to a clinician. From there a clinician should consider a diagnosis of OCD.

Hoarding has been associated with health risks, impairment in functioning, and economic burden (e.g. see Diefenbach, DiMauro, Frost, Steketee & Tolin, 2013). Hoarding has been related to increased occupational impairment, such as cluttered work environment, increased psychiatric work impairment days, and an elevated risk of employment termination (Tolin, Frost, Steketee, Gray & Fitch, 2008a). Hoarders and their family members are approximately three times as likely to be overweight or obese, more likely to report an increased range of chronic and severe medical issues, and used mental health services five times more often than the general population (Tolin et al., 2008a). Hoarding has also been linked with family distress, strained relationships, and dysfunction (Tolin, Frost, Steketee & Fitcha, 2008b). Moreover, non-hoarding children who experienced a severely cluttered environment during early childhood have been associated with increased childhood distress, such as difficulty making friends, reduced social contact in the home, less happiness, and embarrassment about the condition of the home (Tolin et al., 2008b). Furthermore, hoarding has been linked to increased risk of fire, falls, poor hygiene, infestation, and eviction (Diefenbach et al., 2013;

The obsessive compulsive disorder that a hoarder has causes them to hold onto each object in their home as if it is a precious commodity. This is because they have developed an emotional attachment to it all. So when it comes time to throw things away, expect some resistance to occur.