Hoarders
 

This thread is about both the A&E "Hoarders" and TLC "Hoarding: Buried Alive" shows.

I am watching last week's A&E episode now. I felt so sorry for the old man. :(

The new A&E episode aires at 9:00.

http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/video/

http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/hoarding-buried-alive

I'm watching. Whoa.

AWFUL ALERT: I think I'm going to go brush my teeth for an hour after this show.

I cannot watch these shows on a regular basis. I have hoarding tendencies myself, and instead of scaring me straight, these shows just make me say "oh, you're totally fine."

LOL.

I don't, but our back bedroom is pretty epic with boxes right now.

We have talked about hoarding in the "what do you feel like saying now" and another thread. I wish I could find those posts which also discuss hoarding throughout history.

Being a hoarder is an extreme of being messy or being a collector. Are you sure you have hoarding tendencies, 33girl?

As for these shows, not all hoarders are "gross." Some are clean people who just can't stop collecting items and have so many items that they can barely walk around their house. Unfortunately, many and perhaps most hoarders are "gross" in that they have things like feces on their bathroom floor; and have a packed refrigerator filled with rotten food and maggots. It's messy to the extreme because it is an obsession and (according to some people) an addiction. The woman in this episode is a "gross" hoarder. It is quite sad.

agzg has conned me into watching this show.

I'm already disgusted.

Not all Hoarders are messy...agree...my dad "collects"-'well, everything. It's crowded but not dirty...

However.....nothing has motivated me to clean like a "bad" episode of Hoarders! There was one with a lady who hoarded food...I scrubbed my kitchen after that one! It's been very helpful to me in that regard :)

Winter, there's a thin line between being a collector and a hoarder. I pray that your dad remains on the side of collector. :)

I'm watching now, the old lady on this one in Dayton makes me sad, and the old man makes me angry.

My MiL has hoarding tendencies. She's clean, but she collects clutter like its her job.

I have pretty much every magazine I've ever bought or subscribed to (I did get rid of the Tiger Beats when I cleaned out Mom & Dad's house). That's the main thing. Oh, and the makeup and beauty supplies, although there are people online WAY younger than me with WAY bigger amounts of it. It reminds of the joke that I think Richard Jeni told about the Internet making you feel normal - that if you type in "sex with goat" it responds "specify type of goat."

It's all neat though, one of my friends said one time "your makeup is SO organized!" I was like hello, I couldn't find anything otherwise.

My husband is a pack rat who could become a hoarder, given the opportunity. I can't stand clutter. My solution is to occasionally get really pissed off and start throwing things away, which is usually precipitated by thoughts of burning down my house and moving. CANNOT.STAND.CLUTTER.

Love the show though. lol

It's interesting how no one has mentioned the psychological issues behind this disease. For these people on "Hoarders" on A&E at least, it's not just about collecting things, it's about much more. I collect things too but it's not destroying my life and burying me in a deep depression. Being deeply depressed can make one be "gross." And I do believe addiction is part of it at the extreme level. Actually anything can be an addiction for those who are prone to it.

There are some that are so easy to understand...on this one hoarding show (it wasn't either of the 2 mentioned) the guy doing the hoarding was the son of Japanese-American parents who'd been sent to an internment camp during WWII. Obviously they didn't get to take anything with them and when they finally did get back to a normal life, they never got rid of anything they acquired.

**Clarifying my too early in the morning typing**

The psychological issues and whether it is a disease has still been debated by some because there are different types of collecting (collectors) that may or may not be hoarding. The more blatant and extreme forms of hoarding are more easily categorized.

There are some psychologists and psychiatrists who do not deal specificially with hoarding but will deal with what are considered by some to be the underlying issues. Generally, whether or not that addresses and eventually stops the hoarding (if it is truly an addiction, you are never cured) depends on the hoarder.

Where are Drole and KSUViolet with the DSM-IV and letters after their names?

I remember from Abnormal Psychology that hoarding was often put with OCD and anxiety disorders, but that hoarders often had comorbidity with depression and add/adhd.

I actually know quite a few people with hoarders in their family who have had to clean up when someone dies or enters assisted living. These were people alive during the Depression and WWII as well as from rural farm areas so at some point it may have crossed the line from "don't throw things away they could be useful or we need it/can't get it/can fix it" to junk and garbage. I was also completely fascinated by siblings where one was a hoarder and the other was super neat & clean to the point of germphobia, which made the OCD connection from class real life.

I know my home town has been open and going public about hoarders and trying to help them and their families, I think the first hoarder show that spawned the series was out of San Francisco. It is notoriously hard to treat with therapy and medication and relapse is high.