Hoarding Disorder Explained

[Music] you can watch the best parts of this series at met circle comm quarters there are millions in the US research suggests as many as 14 million people may suffer from a hoarding disorder but according to dr. Jenny yep the majority of patients who have the right support system in place do recover this series will teach you the signs of compulsive hoarding and the strategies to help your loved one who's showing these signs welcome to the med circle premium series how to help a hoarder the signs and strategies doctor yep welcome back to med circle thank you so much for having me back now you were made famous maybe infamous depending on who watched it with him you took off the bottom of your shoe and licked it okay I can see how that could be and I wasn't the first person to do it there's been many before me yeah and it wasn't the first time you do it almost too often you are certainly an expert when it comes to the field of OCD for people who are just getting to me for the first time give them a little bit of your background well I have treated obsessive-compulsive disorder and Oh Cyril ated disorder such as hoarding for almost two decades I come from a family where there are several members who have OCD and also hoarding so I myself suffered from OCD since childhood and I thought I had conquered it and then we experienced it during my postpartum period so this disorder is very near to me and my goal is to help your audience really understand what it is and what it's not and to dispel a lot of the myths around it yeah well here's my first question when it comes to hoarding when we watch it on TV it's always so dramatic and monumental you walk into these homes and you cannot move and there are sometimes dead animals and and you know it is not safe to live in and you can't breathe in there is that really what's going on in 14 million homes in America well not all 14 million okay in America so those are the severe those are the really severe cases and I can get to that degree and unfortunately without treatment hoarding tends to have a chronic course so can I eventually get to that place well of course it might not be there at this very moment the person might have just three pets mm-hmm you never know those three pets can easily turn into 20 30 50 so then let's go into what life looks like for somebody who has hoarding disorder a person who has hoarding disorder would have a hard time getting rid of their possessions they would have intense attachments to those possessions they would experience a lot of distress if they were to part from their items they have a tendency to also accumulate items so they might be bringing things home that are free from you're you're an event they could be buying a lot of things when it's on sale just so that they can have it and the accumulation gets to a point where places in the home is no longer used for what they're intended for so this coffee table wouldn't be used for things such as these cups tubs aren't used for bathing the stove isn't used for cooking because it is filled with stuff Wow and in York you've worked with people who have hoarding disorders yes I have worked with people who Ord yes and have you been inside their homes I have been inside every one of their homes yes and what kind of things have you seen things that I have seen okay well I mean they can be things that we all we see in all of our homes newspapers mail books papers they can also be things that most of us wouldn't collect such as food items expired foods it could also include things like animals as we just spoke about so again how easy it is to have three pets turn into ten quite easy for a person who hoards some of the more another common item is clothes right we often have too many clothing and shoes and bags that we just don't have places for so it could be common things it could be things that are not as common have you ever found a dead animal in a house I have what kind of animal it was a cat and by the time that the the person who had realized that the cat you know it was deceased by that point and it was already rotting Wow right so in the home in the home yes and well it was in the backyard of the home yes what is the difference between someone who is a hoarder and someone who just has a lot of stuff or someone who collects well person who hoards again they have different they have a problem discarding items they have a problem with accumulating items and then they also have a problem with figuring out where to place all the items so the house tends to be disorganized there's really no category for where things are supposed to be placed which is different than the person who has clutter person who has clutter you might have too many things and you might get to cleaning the place up except it's just cluttered right this moment so if you can imagine if you had just moved and you have things in random places or it's it's Friday night and you haven't cleaned your place for the entire week that is what a clutter home would look like versus a hoarders home I mean there are just piles of papers and stuff and books and anything that the hoarder is collecting in random places it's all disorganized now then there's the collector who is actually collecting items of value to most people that's not to say that the hoarder isn't collecting the items of value it's just not a value to most be most people right so the collector might be collecting antiques might be collecting rare books might be collecting albums and they're usually placed in organized categories and they could even be displayed because it's something that you want to show off mm-hmm what was the worst hoarding situation that you've ever seen I would say that at one point there was a woman who was collecting I mean she wasn't collecting she had a lot of animals and she really believed that she was she was saving these animals she was a rescuer an animal rescuer the problem is she would end up adopting these animals if the there was no placement for the animals right so it got to the point where her whole home was filled with I would say almost 50 animals and one person cannot you know cannot care for 50 animals only so it got to the point where the house was just unsanitary it was a health risk animal welfare had to be involved and what made it one of the most challenging cases was the emotional intensity of it because the person really believed that she was caring for these animals keeping them from being you know put down unfortunately that wasn't the case what was really happening was that the animals weren't being cared for properly they weren't getting the nutrition or the food that they needed a lot of them were starving of hunger thirst they were dying and she wouldn't know about it because there are just so many mmm yeah I can only imagine what that would be like for her who was suffering from this this disorder and I mean no one loves animals more than me and so I feel for those animals yeah but in her reality she did not think those animals were being abused she did not think those animals were in a bad situation so for somebody to come and remove those animals from her that she likely really loved I mean if someone took Kali away from me the dog here I would be distraught and devastated because I wouldn't understand why my the love of my life would have to leave of course you know nearly 15 Center about 15% of people who recognize that there's an issue 15% you say you think that's a little high because in your experience it's less well I would say that most people who get into treatment don't get into treatment because they willingly come to treatment right I would say that most of the time when we get calls that the renewed freedom Center it is because family members are calling on their loved ones behalf trying to find help trying to find solutions because their family member not only isn't recognizing it's a problem they're not willing to go into treatment and they're quite defensive about it being a problem yeah so 15 percent is actually seems a bit high and in my experience yeah but either way that's still a very low number which leaves 85% of the people out there needing motivation to get into a screening process and to get into treatment one thing that I loved in this series is that you gave viewers the tools they need to participate in what's called motivational interviewing which is getting someone to see the reality of situation and get them amped up about improving their own life and my favorite part of the series was our treatment episode because treatment can be a very gray area because not one thing is gonna work for everybody and all that but you made the treatment for hoarding disorder very understandable very simple to follow and it gave me a lot of hope I don't know anybody personally who has hoarding disorder but with this devastating condition you brought such a clear plan to place and for me that was just that was the game changer of the series and so I want to give our viewers a sneak peek of that as well take a look at this clip from our treatment episode [Music] so you help the person actually go through the process of solving regular everyday problems and for a person who hoards who has difficulty making decisions it could be something as simple as well I have guests coming over what kind of hors d'oeuvres should I have right or what kind of food let's not even out order what kind of food should I have so it could be something as simple as that well let's think about all of the possible foods that you can think of and out of these 10 different options which would be the easiest for you to implement and you're saying you need to teach them how to do that as well yes Wow yes because again part of sorting and sifting is to figure out what I'm going to keep what I'm going to discard so there's there's a fundamental problem here of just making decisions with hoarders so it's not about addressing they're just addressing accumulating all of this stuff and never discarding it it's about how to teach them to make decisions in all aspects of their life initially initially okay yeah it's on it and then once they get a handle of that then we'll actually go through the sorting and sifting and discarding okay this is so good even after the sorting and sifting and you know after we separate the piles there's the problem of well are you going to be able to part with your items and how do we deal with the distress imparting with with the items so you know we have to do exposures to the discomfort of parting with your items so purposely parting with your items and sitting with the discomfort knowing that your discomfort will subside on its own and out of the people that you've treated or that your facility has treated what would you say the average recovery rate is I would say that about 60 to 70 percent of patients who are highly motivated and committed to treatment will recover mmm now again your motivation is the most important determining factor to treatment recovery so the biggest part of treatment is motivating the person to recognize hoarding as a problem that doesn't fit with your value system that doesn't fit with your meaning of life and therefore is willing and motivated and committed to treatment yeah and that is the biggest part of it yeah you know understanding hoarding disorder and what goes into treating it requires an education which you provided in this series but what you also provided us is our series that we filmed on OCD because while hoarding disorder is related to OCD it is not o C D and so when I actually was preparing for this interview I watched our series on OCD to make sure that I was understanding the difference and we also talked to treatment about the importance of CBT which we have an entire series at med circle calm cognitive behavioral therapy which I also watched in preparing for this interview so for somebody who knows somebody who has hoarding disorder they have this series they have the OCD series to understand what it is not and they also have the CBD series among others to really get a grasp of how to approach their loved one with hoarding disorder get them into the right right treatment plan so that they can be one of the 60 to 70% who recover right that's so exciting yes well again the most important determining factor is your motivation yeah if you're motivated then this will work yeah if you don't even recognize it as a problem why would you even go into treatment to begin with or even entertain the possibility of treatment so motivating the loved one to suffer is a huge part to treatment success yeah well I'm super motivated I'm really excited our members are going to really find the value in benefit with this series and so I thank you on their behalf but I'm sure you'll be getting plenty of messages for them too I'm Kyle Kittleson and remember whatever you're going through you got this thanks for watching your next step is to go to med circle comm and finish watching this series there you can also access other series and get actionable advice and simple explanations continue your mental health journey at Med circle comm and I'll see you there [Music]

Channel: MedCircle

Views: 168,594

Keywords: hoarders, hoarder, hoarding, hoard, hoarding disorder, disorder, self help, help, signs, symptoms, anxiety, tlc, ocd, clutter, alive, addiction, buried, intervention, save, clean, things, waste, stuff, collection, junk, food, trash, unhealthy, risk, animals, animal, collects, how to organize, how to clean, best, worst, psychology, mental, psychologist, explains, mental health, health, people, videos, video, episodes, tv show, series, united states, youtube, medcircle, kyle kittleson, hoarders full episodes

Id: 01Vn6Jhb0wU

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019