Hoarding vs. Being a Packrat

How Much Clutter Is Too Much?

By Mary Kearl

You've read the headlines: After being reported missing for seven years, woman is found dead in her house, lost among the clutter. Woman suffocates and dies under collapsed piles of clothes. Male trash hoarder dies in labyrinth of garbage tunnels.

Some articles call them hoarders, others call them packrats. These stories seem extreme and isolated. But according to new research from the University of Michigan Health System, hoarding presents a real danger, not only for those who do it but also for their neighbors -- creating fire hazards, as well as unsanitary, unsafe conditions. In addition, hoarders face the real prospect of becoming buried under an avalanche of trash. Researchers note that treating hoarding is difficult because people who suffer from it don't see it as a problem. According to the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation (OCF), an estimated 700,000 to 1.4 million people in the United States are believed to have compulsive hoarding syndrome, a sub-condition of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The OCF defines hoarding as "the acquisition of, and inability to discard, worthless items even though they appear (to others) to have no value ... [Hoarders] have symptoms of indecisiveness, procrastination, and avoidance ..."

In the gallery below, Jeff Szymanski, Ph.D., executive director of the OCF, explains the differences between packrats and obsessive hoarders and just why someone may become a hoarder. Plus, read an excerpt that details how hoarding has affected two people first-hand -- and their families..." More

Some obsessions, compulsions not part of OCD

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

(CNN) -- Driving over a pothole may not be a big deal for most people, but for Jeff Bell, it was a source of endless frustration.
Afraid that he had injured a person, he would drive back to each pothole again and again to check, and he lost a lot of time in the process.

"I knew that my behaviors made no sense. I knew that my thoughts that were triggering these behaviors made no sense, and yet I felt so helpless to do anything about it," he said.

Bell, a news anchor with KCBS Radio in San Francisco, California, now knows that his condition has a name: obsessive-compulsive disorder. He frequently speaks out about it and has written a memoir called "Rewind, Replay, Repeat."

Psychologists are debating where OCD belongs in relation to other psychiatric disorders, and whether certain symptoms are actually part of other conditions. The condition affects as many as 4 million Americans, according to the International OCD Foundation, for which Bell is a spokesman.

In a class of its own?

Currently, OCD sits with anxiety disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association to help diagnose mental illness. The next edition will be released in 2012, according to the APA.

Many experts, such as Jonathan Abramowitz, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, believe OCD should stay with anxiety disorders. That's because people with the disorder tend to engage in repetitive behaviors to reduce anxiety.

There is mixed evidence based on brain scans that OCD has a separate biological mechanism, leading some psychiatrists to favor classifying it separately, Abramowitz said.

"We haven't exactly pinned down what might be the problem," he said.

Categorizing related symptoms:

Checking for evidence of harm done, as in Bell's case, is one of many manifestations of OCD. Some people are overly afraid of germs, while others are overwhelmed by thoughts of violence or sex, or fear that they have "sinned," and still others spend countless hours arranging objects, said Jeff Szymanski, executive director of the International OCD Foundation..." More