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Hoarders

Mighty_Emperor

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
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Aug 18, 2002
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There is now studies being done into the underlying issues of the animal collectors:

forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10846
Link is obsolete. The current link is:
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/animal-collectors.10846/


and now people are studying the hoarders and it appears it isn't as simple as people assumed:

Hoarding not a usual compulsion

Excessive hoarding may be a distinct type of obsessive-compulsive disorder not treatable in the standard way, research suggests.

Hoarding and saving has long been thought to be a classic symptom of OCD.

But an American Journal of Psychiatry study found hoarders show different brain activity patterns.

University of California Los Angeles researchers say their work suggests some hoarders may have been receiving inappropriate treatment.

OCD is an anxiety disorder in which sufferers are compelled by irrational fears and thoughts to repeat seemingly needless actions over and over again.

OCD is probably a mix of different disorders
Dr Naomi Fineberg

It is often associated with excessive hand washing, cleaning or repeated checking.

The cause of OCD is not fully understood, but it has been linked to an imbalance of the brain signalling chemical serotonin and is often treated with drugs that alter the way the brain processes this chemical.

Many experts believe excessive hoarding to be another manifestation of the condition.

However, researcher Dr Sanjaya Saxena believes that his work challenges this view.

Biology

He said: "Our work shows that hoarding and saving compulsions long associated with OCD may spring from unique, previously unrecognized neurobiological malfunctions that standard treatments do not necessarily address.

"In addition, the results emphasize the need to rethink how we categorize psychiatric disorders.

"Diagnosis and treatment should be driven by biology rather than symptoms."

The UCLA team carried out sophisticated PET scans to measure brain activity in 45 adults with OCD, of which 12 were hoarders, and 17 people without mental health problems.

The hoarders showed a unique pattern of activity, including less activity in brain regions known as the posterior cingulate gyrus and cuneus.

It is estimated that hoarding and saving symptoms are found in up to 30% of patients currently recognised as having OCD. These people are often also indecisive and perfectionists.

Standard therapies for OCD often seem to have little effect at reducing these particular symptoms.

Failure to come forward

Dr Naomi Fineberg, an expert in OCD at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Welwyn Garden City, told BBC News Online that the finding was "no surprise".

"When you are looking at obsessional patients, hoarders seem to stand apart, and they don't respond well - if at all - to standard anti-obsessional treatments, which makes you think they might be a bit different.

"OCD is probably a mix of different disorders. In fact there is probably a fairly broad spectrum of obsessional disorders."

Dr Fineberg said many hoarders did not come forward for treatment.

Unlike other forms of OCD in which patients often recognise their behaviour as irrational and senseless, hoarders tended to believe they were acting rationally, and did not need help.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/3769677.stm

Published: 2004/06/03 00:19:55 GMT

UCLA PET Study Finds Neurobiology of Hoarders Differs From Other OCD Patients; Findings Open Opportunity for Improving Treatment


Date: June 1, 2004
Contact: Dan Page ( [email protected] )
Phone: 310-794-2265



A PET imaging study conducted at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute indicates the neurobiology of America's estimated 1 million compulsive hoarders differs significantly from people with other obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) symptoms. The findings indicate that different medications could improve treatment success.

Detailed in the June 4 edition of the peer-reviewed American Journal of Psychiatry, the study is the first to examine the neurobiology of people with compulsive hoarding and saving, one of several symptom clusters associated with OCD.

The study identified lower brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus of compulsive hoarders, compared with other OCD patients. This brain structure helps govern decision-making, focused attention, motivation and problem-solving, cognitive functions that are frequently impaired in compulsive hoarders. The study also found a correlation between severity of hoarding symptoms and lower brain activity in the anterior cingulate gyrus across all of the study subjects with OCD.

In addition, the hoarding group showed decreased brain activity in the posterior cingulate gyrus compared to healthy control subjects who had no OCD symptoms. The posterior cingulate gyrus is involved in spatial orientation and memory. The decreased activity in hoarders may explain why they have difficulty with excessive clutter and fear of losing belongings.

The findings also demonstrate how neurobiological testing could improve diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. Lower activity in the anterior and posterior cingulate areas may not only underlie compulsive hoarding symptoms, but also their poor response to standard treatments for OCD. The results suggest cognitive-enhancing medications commonly used in patients with age-related dementia may be more effective at treating compulsive hoarding behaviors than standard OCD medications such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

"Our work shows that hoarding and saving compulsions long associated with OCD may spring from unique, previously unrecognized neurobiological malfunctions that standard treatments do not necessarily address," said Dr. Sanjaya Saxena, lead author and director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute's OCD Research Program.

"In addition, the results emphasize the need to rethink how we categorize psychiatric disorders. Diagnosis and treatment should be driven by biology rather than symptoms. Our findings suggest that the compulsive hoarding syndrome may be a neurobiologically distinct variant of OCD," said Saxena, an associate professor-in-residence of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.

Hoarding and saving behaviors are associated with a number of psychiatric disorders, including age-related dementia and cognitive impairment, but they are most commonly associated with OCD. An estimated 7 million to 8 million people in the United States suffer from OCD, with compulsive hoarding present in up to one-third. Compulsive hoarding is the primary source of impairment in 10 percent to 20 percent of OCD patients.

Compulsive hoarding is one of several symptom clusters associated with OCD. Others include contamination fears that lead to cleaning compulsions, aggressive and harm-related obsessions that lead to doubt and checking, and symmetry and order concerns. Each of these symptom clusters may be associated with a distinct pattern of brain activity. Standard OCD treatments, including serotonin reuptake inhibitor medications, typically are less effective in OCD patients with prominent compulsive hoarding behaviors.

The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute study involved 62 adults: 12 with OCD who had prominent compulsive hoarding behaviors, 33 with OCD who had mild or no symptoms of hoarding, and 17 control subjects who had no OCD symptoms. The researchers used positron emission tomography (PET) to measure brain glucose metabolism, a marker of regional brain activity, in each subject and compared the results.

Upcoming studies at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute will use both PET and magnetic resonance imaging scanning to look for structural and functional abnormalities in the brains of subjects with compulsive hoarding and other types of OCD as the team seeks to further refine and understand these differences. The research team also will examine the effectiveness of newer medications that better address the unique brain activity found in subjects with compulsive hoarding behaviors.

More information about ongoing and future research at the OCD Research Program is available at (310) 794-7305.

Funding for the study was provided by grants and awards from the National Institute of Mental Health, the Obsessive-Compulsive Foundation, the National Alliance for Research in Schizophrenia and Depression, the Department of Energy, and a private donor.

Other members of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute research team included Dr. Arthur L. Brody, Karron M. Maidment, Erlyn C. Smith, Narineh Zohrabi, Elyse Katz, Stephanie K. Baker and Dr. Lewis R. Baxter Jr.

The OCD Research Program at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute conducts research on functional brain imaging, medication treatment, cognitive-behavioral therapy, neuropsychological deficits, genetics, and functional outcome of OCD, major depressive disorder, and OCD Spectrum Disorders such as body dysmorphic disorder and Tourette's syndrome.

The UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute is an interdisciplinary research and education institute devoted to the understanding of complex human behavior, including the genetic, biological, behavioral and sociocultural underpinnings of normal behavior, and the causes and consequences of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Online resources:

· UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute: http://www.npi.ucla.edu

· UCLA OCD Research Program: http://www.mentalhealth.ucla.edu/projects/anxiety/ocdresearch.htm

· David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA: http://www.medsch.ucla.edu

-UCLA-

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/page.asp?RelNum=5218

Emps
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Article Published: Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Mountain junk pile must go

A retired teacher, faced with a possible jail term, is forced to part with 1.5-acre heap of his "things"

By George Merritt
Denver Post Staff Writer


Kittredge - Collection. Storage. Odds and ends. All of them are terms that might be used to describe Bob Acker's expansive mass of stuff.

But they would be too kind - at least that's what some of his neighbors believe.

For nearly 30 years, Acker has been hoarding all manner of things on his property overlooking Kittredge. There are doors off their hinges, glass out of the pane and hubcaps with no wheels.

There are rocks - all kinds of rocks. And skulls from various roadkills stacked in tin trash cans waiting for bugs and time to eat the last of the leathery skin that is still attached.

But mostly there is just stuff. And it must go.

"These people in their half-million-dollar homes didn't like me," Acker said.

No one seemed to notice the retired biology teacher's stash for decades - or seemed to care. Now there are posh mountain houses popping up all around his property.

Acker's veritable junkyard is in the way of development, authorities say, not to mention in violation of zoning laws. The 65-year-old recently agreed to get rid of it all to avoid the pokey.

"He got in the way of progress, I guess," said Jim Congrove, a Jefferson County employee running for commissioner. "But he doesn't deserve to go to jail for it."

Acker's land is within earshot of the whine of buzz saws; two houses are under construction on adjacent property.

Congrove and two of Acker's former students are helping him move everything off the property by a Sept. 30 deadline set by county authorities. He appreciates the help but is sorry he has to give up his collection.

"It is going to be a real shame to lose all these things that I had great plans for," said Acker, who plans to sell the property and move on. "I guess I'll just have less hobbies."

Every item has a story and a purpose. Pick up a random rock, and Acker has a tale.

"Oh, I got that on a trip to Topaz Mountain in Utah," he said of a hunk of topaz.

Pointing to a softball-size piece of quartz, Acker said, "This is part of a big pocket of quartz at Wigwam Creek."

"He has always been like that," said Tamara Hartman. Hartman was Acker's student in her early teens - that was 20 years ago.

"If you were still friends with him after being his student, he would take you rock hunting. All kinds of kids would go with him."

To unload the 1.5-acre heap, estimates Dan Hillsten of 1-800-GOT-JUNK, will take about 140 dump-truck loads over the course of three weeks.

The cost: somewhere around ,000. However, because so much material can be recycled, Hillsten estimates the cost to Acker will be around ,000.

"It is the most amazing thing you have ever seen in your whole life," Hillsten said of Acker's property. "You can tell he is kind of a Renaissance man. But because he is interested in so many things, he does not have time to get into any of them."

For now, Acker lives on the property in the makeshift home he built over the ashes of a three-story house that burned in 1983. Hardly any rooms are accessible. Chairs, light fixtures, wood and metal blend into a homogenous mass in every would-be void.

"There is just enough room to get to the kitchen area, the bathroom and a couch to watch TV," Acker said. "I need the space for my things."

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E53%7E2243127,00.html

He sounds like a great guy.

[edit: I possibly would say that as I could see myself doing something similar if I wasn't too wary (and I find myself slightly jealous that he did his hoarding so well) - I think it was the bit about the rocks as I have an awful lot and could tell you the story of each one too :( ]

Emps
 
All my family are terrible hoarders, including me.

The ex used to hoard rubbish, though. I hoard useful things.

Really.
 
I don't really throw things away, but there's no pattern in what I keep, so I don't know if I'm a hoarder. I just like lots of different things and can't bear to get rid of them.
 
My main problem is that I seem to randomly become sentimental about things I've been given by people, so it seems a shame to throw them away. If they're useless I will, though ;)
 
My brother recently sent photos to the siblings of what my mother's house has become. Not quite at the level of this fellow, but she's an 80 year old woman living by herself in a large house, some of the rooms which are no longer accessible. It's a firetrap, and quite frankly (and painfully) , turning into a dilapidated dump.

Things of real value, things that are nice but that she'll never use and stuff that can only be described as worthless crap all shoved into every available space. Myself and two of my siblings are seriously talking about doing some kind of 'intervention' and spending a week or so trying to get the house in a semblence of order. I've been talking to a good friend who's a psychologist for for strategies to best achieve this.

BTW, this is a lifelong pattern, but has accelerated tremendously during my father's illness and since his death.

What's curious to me (aside from the fact that SHE'S a certified clinical psychologist :eek: :rolleyes: ) is that she's not in the least a miserly person. In fact she's generous to a fault. But she simply cannot bear to throw anything out and buys more things fairly regularly. It's also clear that this is a pathology/disorder (no pun intended!). ANYBODY looking at those pictures, which don't even do it justice, would be appalled and dumbfounded that someone could live like that. Whereas she cannot see it at all. She acknowledges it's a little messy or untidy, but that's it.

Sigh.
 
My step father is on the verge of OCD hoarding I believe. Everything is saved and his and my mothers house is drowning under a sea of sheer 'crap'...it's driving my mother mad and I've got to the point where I find it difficult to visit them anymore because the atomsphere is oppressive.

As for myself, i have the attitude that if something is neither useful nor beautiful than it goes..i love the feeling you get after a good clean-up, i actually like throwing things away.
 
lopaka - your story sounds just like my mother's bedroom. There are just mounds of stuff everywhere. It is mostly clothes or random bits of material that she picks up 'cheap'. It is not as if she is going to make anything out of this stuff, she can't do more than simple sewing. She keeps insisting on buying dreadful clothes for her adult children (who, obviously, also buy their own) and then questions are asked if the dire outfits are never worn. She also buys things like pots and pans, cutlery, etc. but with no intention of these ever being used, they are just stored away too. The situation has got worse in recent years because a) my dad's illness means he sleeps in a downstairs room now, so she had no one to nag her about the mess, and b) the opening of Lidl and Aldi has given her a whole new source of cheap and un-needed things to bring home. Last time I peeped into her bedroom, which is huge, there was only a wee rats' path space to and from the bed and that was it!
 
Last week I spent a day helping a mate clear out the flat where her husband used to live before they were married.

He's an academic and spent all his time writing books and doing research. He doesn't use computers so this meant mounds of paper, journals, notepads and even newspapers.

I said, let's bin the lot. If he kicks off, tell him I did it. So we did, and it took 6 CARLOADS!

We saved anything obviously important but sacked off all the real junk.

I am seriously considering marching him to a PC, forcing him to log onto the 'net and FORCING him to learn to do online research.
May buy a gun.
 
we saw one "minging" house (it was for sale we wernt burgulars)... you could get into th eliveing room with some shimmying but every bed room seemed to be a question of launching yourself from the door way onto the bed... and it stank too...before we cleard out our flat its was extreemly crowded but it didnt stink and now i just love to chuck things away...sod landfill concerns.

the worst was somone universaly known as Mad Willie..he and his girl friend tour the local factory waste bins for electronic stuff.. thier house is unbelivable..you cant sit in any room..one sits in the hall way on top of a pile of rubish..the garage is stacked solid as is another rented garage and the garden... to Hoarding add some sort of odd turrets ticks, snorts and lack of personal hygien and you can see why we dont visit often.
 
"a wee rat's path space". Very vivid and perfectly rendered.

Addendum. I should add that compunding this (my mother and brother live in Hawai'i, the other three sibs live on the mainland, so it's not like we can just drive over to the next town) the University where my father taught for many years is begining to get insistent that she clear out HIS office, after all, he died a year-and-a-half ago. They've been quite patient about it, as he was very highly regarded in his field. She can't understand why they don't want to leave it as a permanent monument to him or has this fantasy that some institute will be created in his name to house this stuff. (According to my brother and sister-in-law, whose take on things I trust, especially hers, she gets even more werd & defensive on the tpoic of his office than she does about her home)

Can't just toss it, however, as those things contain very little 'junk'. Rare books and manuscripts, etc. And where to put it? There's no room in the house, obviously. And even if we did all the labor to clear out merely one of the rooms in the house, filling it up with yet more things really doesn't seem to be the right approach.

Sorry. Maybe I should take this to the whige thread...:(
 
Lopaka, can't they donate things to the university? If he was prominent in his field, they could call it the Professor Lopaka Collection or whatever--usually the unis are eager to get their paws on such things. My ex-bf's father was a major mucky-muck in his field (ppl here would probably recognize his name) and they wound up giving most of his papers, books etc. to the university.
 
Thanks, Leaferne. Unfortunately my dad did a lifetime of world-class research at what amounts to a third-rate public institution. We have not unreasonable fears that simply donating it to them would be tantamount to tossing it away. (ie it being left in shed somewhere, thrown out or "disappeared".The thought is that there must be a better alternative, but if push comes to shove, we may well just give it to them and pray for the best.

Anyway, apologies. Dion't mean to turn this into a thread about me and my family *drama*.
 
Heres an idea lopaka...seeing as he was renowned in his field... maybe there would be a grant or money available to employ a student to catalog and collate the stuff (in holidays)
 
I know how you feel.

My Father and his wife do a lot of charity work...the sort of stuff that no one else can be bothered with, ali collecting and storing jumble.

2.5 of the 3 bedrooms in their house are crammed.

I say "give it to another charity"

They say "it has to be sorted first" (they have no time for that, being `everyones business but their own` people.)

I say "give me a few boxes, Ill sort them, put the good stuff on Ebay, give the rest to another charity, take my cut, with a bit for you...everyones happy."

Hasnt worked. I did get £42 for a nice golf bag I `borrowed` though. they werent impressed. If I could raise £10 per box and give half to them, I think i would be doing well...(better than a jumble)

I wont talk about my father and tools...

I hate throwing stuff away, and Im the very devil for finding stuff...I have to be very careful at times.

Ebay is good to get rid of junk, theres always someone who wants it...also good for finding junk...
 
When my aunt passed away in the early 80's we found her apartment in a hoarder's shambles. There were canned goods that had sat upon the shelf for so long that the acid in them had eaten through the cans. We found mail (bills, checks, you name it) stuffed into books. Even foudn some cash in a few books. It was mostly newspapers, and brown paper bags, and such-like. I'm a bit of a hoarder myself (books and magazines, mostly), but nothing on that level.
 
When I was living in Holland 6 or 7 years ago, I stayed in a hostel for a few months and there was a guy there called Mark, I think, who just hoarded every conceivable kind of junk. But he would actually go out every evening and look around the streets, bins, dumps etc and come back with boxes of stuff. He had boxes of nails sorted out by size, electronic stuff, bits of bikes and record players, mechanisms, pieces of wood and everything you can think of. He was eventually thrown out because his stuff started cluttering up the entire place. As far as I know he was thrown out the next place he went to for the same reason.
 
Sounds like The Fan Man!
 
The Fan Man

It's about a drug-addled hippy who hoards piles of rubbish and has to 'extend' his apartment to contain it all by breaking into neighbouring ones and dumping some there.

I read it soon after it came out and it gave me a strange impression of New York.

Dorky.
 
Sold!

eBay is slowly curing my hoarding, eroding perhaps. The thrill of selling something worthless, to someone who realy wants it, is even greater than the urge to save said thing til it becomes useful.

The only thing I cant find a market for are my old Commodaore Amigas, they really do apear to be worthless! :(
 
NASA was reduced to scouring ebay for long-defunct PC parts a few years back to help maintain old fashioned hardware on which essential data had been stored. :D

I've just sold a load of odd stuff on ebay. Only a large skip could really help though.
 
I'll buy your Amigas.
Oh no, wait, I've already got a big box of them under the bed.
 
When the first came out I saved and saved for it, then a few years lated the version with the hard drive hit the streets! What could I do!!
 
In the past I've had the notion of getting an old Amiga to fiddle with, although not enough to actually pay for one or anything :) I had a few friends who had them, but I used a ZX Spectrum until my dad brought home an old IBM XT (when I suspect 386s and 486s were about, so it was dated even then), then I got a 286 from his work, and then someone gave me a 486 ;) I think I might still have the motherboard for that 486 somewhere. The case it came in (complete with power supply) is still in use with the K6/233 running Linux to share our internet connection ;)
 
FWIW, I copied and sent the first two articles Emps started this thread with to my aforementioned pyschologist friend. Here's his response:

Thanks D.--it is interesting, although of course steeped in the currently fashionable neurobiological reductionism. Certainly agree that compulsive hoarding seems different from other forms of OCD, for the reasons they give. But their samples are too small to have much statistical significance I think, and even if there do prove to be differences in the cingulate area in hoarders---doesn't show causality. I think like everything else it is multifactoral, neurobiology certainly a factor but so are cultural, social, familial, intrapsychic and other influences. I don't know where they get the cognitive impairment stuff---the hoarders I've met are generally smarter than average, and perfectly functional in other areas of their life. None of this helps with your Mom's difficulty, which requires some practical action to clear out the junk and prevent the house from collapsing---I hope they do come up with a pill for this, but I'm not holding my breath.
yr. ever-skeptical pal, M.
 
I have 2 working spectrums (I don't actually have an Amiga, being a spectrum owner I was anti-everything commodore). Well, they probably work, it's not like I turn them on or anything.
 
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