A question of clutter

Hoarding May Become Compulsive

People who engage in hoarding put themselves and neighbors in danger, say experts at the University of Michigan Health System.

Their living conditions can present a fire hazard and are often unsanitary and unsafe. Hoarders face the real prospect of becoming buried under an avalanche of trash.

Treating hoarding is difficult because people who suffer from it often don’t see the squalor they live in as a problem.

“We all collect, we all save,” says James L. Abelson, M.D., Ph.D, an anxiety disorders expert in the U-M Department of Psychiatry. “We apply the term ‘hoard’ when it’s a more extreme version of acquiring and not discarding.”

It is believed hoarding afflicts one- to one-and-a-half million people in the United States, Abelson says.
Hoarders, he says, succumb to forces within their brains such that the overflowing garbage in their homes isn’t seen or isn’t experienced as distressing, Abelson says.

Source and More:
http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/03/10/hoarding-may-become-compulsive/4648.html