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New
Guide for Those Who Cannot Discard
Bill, 40, has a yard littered with old, rusting cars
and junked appliances. He haunts flea markets and junkyards
looking for bargains, then brings items home, where they
sit, unattended. His house is so cluttered, floor to ceiling,
with such useless items that most doorways are blocked
and he has to squeeze sideways to enter his house. The
smell of rotting food pervades his residence and insects
constantly buzz around inside.
Pam, 53, shares a home with her 35 cats, and has had
as many as 75 cats at one time. The smell of ammonia hangs
in the air, and cat waste is seen smeared about the interior
walls and floors. A self-proclaimed animal lover, Pam began
collecting cats from an animal shelter to save them from
being euthanized.
 Bill and Pam are two real-life examples of compulsive hoarders
documented in a new book, Buried in Treasures: Help for
Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding, co-authored
by Smith’s Randy O. Frost, the Harold Edward and Elsa
Siipola Israel Professor of Psychology. Frost wrote the book
with David E. Tolin, founding director of the Anxiety Disorders
Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., and
Gail Steketee, a professor at the Boston University School
of Social Work.
“I started studying hoarding in the early 1990s,” says
Frost, who, along with Tolin and Steketee formed the New
England Hoarding Consortium, which is devoted to the study
and treatment compulsive hoarding. “At that time it
was an unrecognized problem on which there was little or
no research, and people suffered in secret and in silence.
This book is a culmination of the work done since then.”
Buried in Treasures, as its subtitle suggests,
is a practical handbook to assist those who suffer from the
disorder known as compulsive hoarding in managing and overcoming
the condition, which can become debilitating and threatening
to physical health.
“While most of us find it relatively easy to manage
our possessions, a large number of people, approximately
1 percent of the population, find it extremely difficult,” explains
the book’s cover notes. “Compulsive hoarding
is a behavioral problem consisting of excessive clutter,
difficulty discarding items, and excessive buying or other
acquiring. If you or a loved on has a compulsive hoarding
problem, this book can help.”
Buried in Treasures is
arranged in a step-by-step sequence of chapters that explain
and offer advice on “Sorting/Discarding:
Getting Ready,” “Help With Reducing Acquiring” and “Maintaining
Your Success.”
Helpful as the book may be for those afflicted with hoarding
problems, its authors emphasize that it is not a panacea,
only a guide.
“This book will not solve your hoarding problems,” they
write in the introduction. “This book is a guide that
will provide you with the necessary information to understand
the problem of compulsive hoarding and will give you the
tools to help beat the problem. The rest is up to you. This
book is a road map, and you are the driver.”
Of course, those who hoard
and habitually acquire items they don’t need are
on a continuum of behavioral affliction. Yet, for anyone
who finds herself with a surplus of useless items occupying
usable space for no justifiable reason, regardless of the
extent of the malady, Buried in Treasures is
written broadly enough to provide helpful pointers. |
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