The Secret Lives of Hoarders_ True Stories of Tackling Extreme Clutter - Matt Paxton [27]
One of the keys to success on a hoarder cleanup is to get the hoarder back into the world and involved in outside activities and a social life. For that reason, any social disorder needs to be treated as part of a hoarder’s recovery therapy.
▶ Dementia
Rick, the retired professor with a house full of paper, was showing signs of dementia when the cleanup began. He was very forgetful, often standing in the living room hunched over in confusion and asking the same question over and over. Sometimes he didn’t recognize an item he had in his hand, or remember why he was holding it. His sister commented that the problem had been worsening over the past year.
He had focused on information hoarding during a lifetime as a professor, but his forgetfulness had exacerbated the problem. He would pick up something, intending to use it or throw it away, and then forget why he was holding it. Confused, he would just set it down again on a growing pile.
A study published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry found that 23 percent of patients with dementia also showed hoarding behavior. As the population ages, dementia—and hoarding—will increasingly become severe problems, which need to be addressed in tandem. When a hoarder isn’t even able to have a coherent conversation about the issue, interventions are essential if the hoarder is living in conditions that are physically dangerous or unhealthy.
WHY GET INVOLVED?
Aside from the emotional toll that hoarding takes, it can make conditions physically unsafe for the hoarder. Piles can fall over and germs can cause illness. A cluttered house can hide serious structural damage. An elderly hoarder can have trouble getting around, and if there are medical issues, it’s sometimes impossible for emergency medical teams to even get into the house to respond.
As we have discussed, hoarding is—and often disguises—a severe mental problem, as hoarders tend to be isolated, cutting themselves off, socially and emotionally, even when they crave human interaction. If a hoarder also has a related mental disorder, that often goes untreated.
Hoarding affects more than just a hoarder. Children growing up in a hoarder house don’t learn to set limits on their possessions and sometimes on their behavior. I’ve seen those bad habits spill over into work attitudes and financial management, so that a child of a hoarder struggles to follow rules on the job or stick to a budget. Children of hoarders talk about the emotional trauma of feeling like their hoarder parent chose hoarding over his or her children. And some of them grow up to become hoarders themselves.
Hoarders also make a big financial mess that someone else often has to clean up. Hoarders who spend money on their acquisitions usually end up broke and dependent on family members, or the government, for assistance. When a late-stage hoarder is forced to clean up, it’s often the county that’s paying the bill. Social workers, building inspectors, and animal protection services are all paid for with tax dollars, so even people who aren’t directly affected by hoarding are increasingly paying the price for it.
And last but not least, hoarders leave behind a legacy that causes a lifetime of pain. When a hoarder passes on and leaves a cluttered house, family members have to deal with it at a time when they are already raw and under tremendous stress, leaving the family unable to go through the natural phases of grief.
Too many families wait until the hoarding gets seriously out of hand before they start really pushing to fix the problem. Watching for the early warning signs is critical, and understanding the types and stages of hoarding outlined in Chapter 1 will make everyone’s job much easier. Addressing hoarding sooner rather than later has tremendous shortand long-term benefits, potentially breaking the cycle of hoarding that causes so much grief. Since many of the mental