Suffocated By Stuff: Trying to Help

Follow the #hoarders hashtag on Twitter and you’ll see disgust, sympathy and promises of renewed commitment to cleanliness from people who watch the A&E show Hoarders.

What rarely is discussed is the intricacy of a condition with unexpected ties to an obsession with strict cleanliness.

The duty of studying the complexities falls to Catherine Ayers, a UC San Diego professor.

Ayers spoke at the International OCD Foundation’s annual conference in San Diego recently, is heading a federally funded study on hoarding among seniors 60 and older and is seeking participants.

People are particularly prone to packing their homes with possessions as they grow older, Ayers said, and hoarding only “gets worse with age” if left untreated.

“The key thing is it’s a psychiatric disorder or a mental (illness),” Ayers, who helped launch the San Diego Hoarding Collaborative, said. “It’s not something people are doing on purpose.”

• Slots remain open in Ayers’ free “Treatment of Late-Life Compulsive Hoarding” research project, on hoarders who are 60 and older.
• The study is being funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
• Participants must be willing and able to come to the La Jolla VA building, 3350 La Jolla Village Dr. Individuals or family members can call Ayers at 858-552-8585, ext. 2976.

An estimated 3 to 5 percent of the general population are hoarders, and with an increased awareness of the condition many more think they, too, have more than just a messy home, Ayers said.

The line between hoarding and being a packrat or just disorganized depends on the effect the behavior has on everyday life, Ayers said.

“That line is distress and impairment,” she said, such as an inability to go to work and social functions, or an emotional reluctance to get rid of things.

Therapy must be part of any hoarding treatment, or the items are likely to pile right back up, Ayers said.

Hoarding is typically considered to be related to obsessive-compulsive disorder.

When it comes to hoarding, the tie to OCD may be both in the compulsion to buy things (many hoarders have rooms full of new, unused clothes, etc.) and the obsession with perfection, researchers say.

For example, a germaphobic perfectionist’s home can devolve into that of a trash-collecting hoarder as a symbol of all-or-nothing thinking: If it can’t be perfect, it shouldn’t be done at all.

But not all hoarders have OCD. A combination of genetic and environmental factors can lead to hoarding, such as trauma and other mental illnesses, Ayers said. Researchers are still trying to figure out how other disorders may cause or relate to hoarding.

Rancho Bernardo Patch editor Shauntel Lowe recently looked at the issue of hoarding in popular culture, how it affects loved ones and how one local expert is trying to help. Next up, an author and expert focuses on hoarding.