the trend of hoarders final

7/30/2019 The Trend of Hoarders Final

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Christina Hudgins

Professor Presnell

Honors English 1103

November 12

th

, 2012The Trend of Hoarders

I grew up in a house that always seemed to have some sort of

pile or organized clutter in every nook and cranny of the rooms. My

mom saved and collected things from coins, which she never let us use

for vending machines, to antique books that were almost illegible and

not to be flipped through in fear that they may fall apart. Her mother

also enjoyed collecting, having probably over ten thousand Barbie dolls

(all still in the box) and over seven thousand Christmas ornaments( she

religiously counts each and every one as she places them on the tree).

My father has so many tools and machines in our overstuffed garage

that he says he will fix later and use, which never really happens.

When we had to clean out his mothers house after her death we found

boxes and boxes of buttons and pins, plus all other sorts of nick nacks,

sorted into different categories of every color and size. I also have an

uncle who loves Star Wars, having an apartment filled to the brim with

these movies paraphernalia from mugs to life-size, cardboard cutouts.

As my sister and I grew up, we sort of fell into the same trend as our

relatives, collecting all the different types of a certain type of doll,

asking for every category of animal for our stuffed animal collections,


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and never wanting to let go of what we had worked for so many years

to collect.

Coming to college and having to leave all my collections at

home, I realized that it was sort of strange to have so much of one

almost pointless thing when there are so many useful and meaningful

things I could have in a smaller number and get by fine. I wondered

why my family, in particular, got into a habit of collecting things over

the years and if it was just collecting or hoarding? I did not know very

much about what qualified a person to be a hoarder, other than

watching the television show on TLC, Hoarding: Buried Alive or

learning in United States History that after the Great Depression,

people in America started to hold on to their possessions more

carefully, initiating some habits of hoarding. To me, collecting turned

into hoarding when the objects acquired to the person have no

personal meaning other than that person already had a lot of that

same object in their possession. However, after extensive research on

what hoarding really was, I found an answer that may explain why my

family and the rest of society truly feels the need to hoard.

Difference Between Hoarding and OCD

When starting my research, I found that there is much

controversy over whether or not to associate compulsive hoarding with

obsessive- compulsive disorders. Sanjaya Saxena, an MD of the


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Department of Psychiatry at The University of California at San Diego,

wrote about recent studies, which found that patients with OCD have a

different type of abnormal brain activity than those of a compulsive

hoarder. Randy A. Sansone, professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and

Internal Medicine at Wright State University School of Medicine in Dayton, Ohio,

and Director of Psychiatry Education at Kettering Medical Center in Kettering,

Ohio, found that when the two are linked together, hoarding is viewed

more as a symptom, mostly effective on younger people. This type of

hoarding shows a great fear and indecisiveness of discarding objects

along with excessive checking of objects acquired and organization of

hoarded objects to an obsessive degree. Hoarding in old age is

found to be more of a syndrome, giving the hoarder pleasure with each

new acquisition of objects and only discomfort when they are forced to

discard their possessions, a different case entirely from OCD patients

who have constant distress and anxiety over their disease or due to

their disease. This brings about the question of if these people are just

collecting, not hoarding? Sansone wrote that collectors organize and

collect specific objects that have a value to them and other collectors,

while hoarders keep things that have little to no significance in an

enormous volume. What, then, is really known about compulsive

hoarding?

Studies of Hoarding


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My investigation was, thus, led to what studies have actually

been done on this subject. According to Randy A. Frost, professor of

psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Maryland, hoarding has

been brought to the spotlight for the public since as early as the

1800s. In the 1950s, hoarding was presented as real issue from an

article written in a New York City newspaper and continues to be

uncovered to society to this day. In 1980, hoarding was officially

associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder. As studies had

progressed, a working diagnosis was made to clarify when a person

should seek help due to a hoarding disorder.

Saxena used this systematic definition from Frost and Hart to

diagnose hoarding:

1) the acquisition of and failure to discard a large number of

possession that appear (to others) to be useless or of limited value, 2)

living or work spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities

for which those spaces were designed, and 3) significant distress or

impairment in functioning caused by the hoarding behavior or clutter.

Compulsive hoarding can be brought out by an obsessive fear of losing

or discarding objects that may be of use later in life. Constant

indecisiveness and avoidance of their sickness are also key symptoms

of hoarding.

It is very difficult to change hoarders ways, since they find

pleasure in their hoarding contrasting with other psychological


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disorders that lead to depression or great anxiety. Saxena stated that

not many treatments for solely compulsive hoarding have been

developed. However, through a few studies it has been discovered

that cognitive-behavioral therapy, that is an action-centered therapy

used to replace negative thoughts or habits (i.e. hoarding) with the

positive, is a more effective treatment than those use of

pharmacotherapy, the use of drugs such as serotonin, to treat

hoarding. Also treatment to increase activity to the ACC or the

anterior cingulate cortex in the brain (vital for decision making,

attention, staying positive, and appraising objects) may help suppress

the urges of a compulsive hoarder. It is debatable whether or not

compulsive hoarding really needs treatment via drugs or if mental

stimulation is sufficient enough. Melinda Beck, columnist of the Health

section of the Wall Street Journal, wrote that family members should

not force their relatives to give away their belongings against their will,

but to try and guide them in the right direction. It may be that a

decision can be reached on keeping a certain number of an item, for

example 100 dolls rather than 500, or slowly donating items to an

organization or group of people that the hoarder cares for and to which

the hoarder will feel good helping.

Melinda Beck gives a great example of how one family

members hoarding ruined the entire clans life, especially the

daughter. She quotes the daughter, Liz, who said, To this day, I will


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not clip coupons- my mother used to save entire newspapers for them-

and if I havent worn something in a year or so, I throw it out. Liz grew

up having to make up excuses to guests of her house as to why there

were piles and piles of clutter forever present from room to room. Lizs

mother was a compulsive hoarder, keeping things from newspapers to

used paper towels. As an adult, Liz considers her experience with her

mothers hoarding a form of child abuse. She now has a fear of falling

into the same trend as her mother, who still hoards at the age of

eighty in a retirement home.

It is the responsibility of the of the loved ones to find the best

way to help their hoarder come back into a healthy lifestyle and to

what extreme they should take to do so. If the hoarder places their

own lives or the lives of others at risk, this may mean going to the

courts to resolve the issue and, in extreme cases, seek to become the

guardian of the loved one as to resolve this issue. Any way one

chooses to resolve this sickness may be expensive and most hoarders

are hesitant to participate in the treatment or stops before they are

cured. With so much debate and difficulty in finding a way to define

and treat this issue in the first place, I wanted to know the factors that

made a person hoard.

Why Do They Do It?


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There are many reasons as to why a person may begin to

compulsively hoard. Saxena found that this trait is past down from

generation to generation in families, with compulsive hoarders having

at least one relative that they consider to be a pack rat. Though the

hoarding factor is strongly familial, its phenotype is genetically discrete

to most families. Compulsive hoarding is a cranial dysfunction having

to do with a persons ability to make decisions efficiently. Therefore,

brain lesions resulting in damage to the orbitofrontal cortex, medial

prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, or frontal poles can also be

a contributing factor as to why someone would hoard, these regions of

the brain being used in decision-making processes. Saxena

emphasized the correlation between indecisiveness and compulsive

hoarding is shown, through this association with decision-making

regions of the brain damaged contributing to hoarding, to be a prime

concept that must be considered in reasoning why someone hoards.

Hoarders find pleasure in the acquisition of a new treasure to add to

their possessions, keeping them wanting more and more, continuing

their hoarding. Marsha Richins, distinguished professor of marketing in

the Trulaske College of Business at the University of Missouri,

illustrated how the more hoarders acquire these often worthless items,

the less they have satisfaction in what they have, leaving them

wanting more. Are these people trying to fill a void that is not meant

to be satisfied with material objects? This led me into an exploration of


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materialism and how it might be the real answer as to why hoarding

occurs.

Hoarding and Materialism

Richins defines materialism as the value that a person gives to

certain physical objects, whether it is wealth or possessions. Studies

have shown that people with a more materialistic outlook on life

become more and more dissatisfied with each new purchase they

obtain, always knowing that there are more, better products out there.

In turn, they also become dissatisfied by their own lives, judging

themselves only by their possessions, not their true identities. On the

other hand, less materialistic people have a more positive outlook on

life, appreciating what they have and how they got it. As our world is

becoming increasingly consumer focused, materialism has been drilled

into the minds of people from an early age. Ever since I began

kindergarten, there has always been something for my classmates and

I to have to be considered cool from beanie babies to the iPhone 5.

The mass production of hundreds of very similar toys, all needing to be

collected to be accepted by peers in society whether it is Barbie dolls

for children to the latest Apple product for adults has led to this

problem. Technological advances make it easier than ever to acquire

these material things in enormous quantities via eBay or other online

shopping sites at prices that are met by many extreme buyers. It


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seems that as people acquire more stuff, they lose sight of the non

material things in their lives, the real relationships they could have

with people who can love them back. Families do not sit down together

for dinner as often, texting has made conversations as extremely

impersonal as possible, games and shopping constantly through the

multitude of outlets available give people reason not to spent time with

others.

Is materialism slowly taking the place of companionship in

society today? And is this focus of materialism slowly making

compulsive hoarding a more common trait or even a trend for the

society of the future? I feel that if our media promoted ways to

appreciate what one already has and how to use their own possessions

to its fullest capacity rather than leaving the public dissatisfied with

their lives on account of their possessions or lack thereof would

ultimately lessen the possibility of a hoarding epidemic in society.

However, the consumer focus of most of the globe gives this hope very

little promise. If people could take time to really realize and

appreciation how much they really have and how much more

satisfaction they can have by living out their lives with others rather

than with unfeeling objects, maybe compulsive hoarding could become

a thing of the past.


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What Does This All Mean?

Frost shares his own interpretation of hoarding in his article with

this quote from The Inferno by Dante Alighieri in J. Ciardi :

Here, too, I saw a nation of lost souls,

far more than were above: they strained their

chests against enormous weights, and with mad howls

rolled them at one another. Then in haste

they rolled them back, one party shouting out:

Why do you hoard? and the other: Why do you waste?

Hoarding and squandering wasted all their light

and brought them screaming to this brawl of wraiths.

You need no words of mine to grasp their plight.

Now, hoarding may not bring people to this level of misery in the

world today, but it does suffocate people from the true meanings of

their lives. Human nature tells us to always take as much as we can,

even at the cost of hurting relationships or, worst, hurting ourselves.

What I have discovered through this study of hoarding is that

people can get so lost and caught up in the world around them, feeling

that they need physical objects to hold on to that they can know for

certain will always be there to have a grasp on reality. The more they

have, the more comfortable they feel, thinking these things give their

lives value. However, my grandmothers doll collection doesnt make


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her any better of a person than if she had never owned a doll in her

life. My uncle can collect as many pieces of Star Wars merchandise as

he can fit in his house, but that doesnt mean that he will be more

loved than if he had less. Things do not necessarily give a life

value, it is the real relationships and interactions with others that make

up ones life.

Everyone, whether they are compulsive hoarders or not, should

step back and look at how they measure the worth of their lives: is it

how much they own or how they impact on other, real people?

Compulsive hoarding is a blinding condition to the hoarder, not being

able to see how great their lives can be with all their treasures piled

too high. With this new understanding of hoarding and materialism in

general, I hope to help my own family see that their collections and

material things do not define their lives, but their love towards others

and each other make their lives priceless.


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Works Cited

Beck , Melinda. "When Hoarding Makes Life Miserable for Others. Wall Street Journal.

9 November 2009. Web. 30 Oct. 2012.

Frost, Randy A. "From Dante to DSM-V: A Short History of Hoarding."International

OCD Foundation. International OCD Foundation-Hoarding Center, 2010 Web. 30

Oct 2012.

Richins, Marsha. "The Positive and Negative Consequences of Materialism: What Are

They and When Do They Occur?"Advances in Consumer Research. University of

Missouri, 2004 Web. 4 Nov 2012.

Saxena, Sanjaya. "Recent Advances in Compulsive Hoarding." Children of Hoarders.

Current Medicine Group LLC, 2008. Web. 30 Oct 2012.

United States. National Center for Biotechnology Information.Hoarding: Obsessive


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Symptom or Syndrome?. By Randy A. Sansone. U.S.National Library of

Medicine, Matrix Medical Communications, 2010. Web. 29 Oct 2012.

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