Patti's Blog - Advocate for Elders, People with Disabilities and Their Families

Social workers turn attention to animal hoarders

Excerpt from Javma News: (click for entire article)

Dealing with animal hoarding should be about helping the hoarders as well as the animals, according to social workers who consult on such cases.

Social workers increasingly are tending to the human issues that arise in human-animal relationships (see story, page 1346). Just a few social workers have focused specifically on animal hoarding, however.

"Without counseling, you're going to see recidivism," said Jane N. Nathanson, a Boston social worker in private practice who counsels animal hoarders. "You're not addressing the needs of the person."

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Also see Addressing Human Needs - New discipline of veterinary social work focuses on human side of human-animal bond

Almost everyone has clutter, but hoarders take it to extreme

Excerpt from Freep.com: (click for entire article)

Maybe, just maybe, you like to save things: old newspapers or a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears or boxes of clothes or bundles of electrical wires and cords, spun together like spaghetti gone mad, and you can't bring yourself to throw it away, none of it -- why? -- because you could sell it, you might give it away, because it's so valuable; maybe you love to shop; you love to hunt for bargains or find gems at a yard sale, and it's a rush to find something special; maybe your closet is a mess or your attic or your basement; all that stuff piles up, like phrases in a jumbled, run-on sentence, compounding in a complicated swirl. And someday soon, you will weed through all your stuff and organize it, all of it, but not right now. Not yet.

New York Woman Dies In Rubbish-Filled House Fire

Excerpt from Firefighter Nation: (click for entire article)

Authorities say a woman has died after fire broke out at her upstate New York home, which firefighters say was piled to the ceiling with rubbish.

Officials tell the Press and Sun-Bulletin of Binghamton and WBNG-TV that the fire was reported around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at a home in Johnson City, just west of Binghamton.

Fire Chief Stephen Hrustich (her-UHS'-tihch) says that when firefighters tried to get in through the front door, they found it blocked by debris. He says items were piled 3 to 4 feet high in some places and to the ceiling in others.

Hrustich says it took about an hour to find the woman. He says she was in her 80s. Her name hasn't been released.

One man's trash

Excerpt from the Chicago Tribune: (click for entire article)

Workers carting out the piles of trash that cluttered a Schaumburg home encountered a few surprises amidst the mess on Wednesday, including five guns and a partially mummified cat.

"Other than that, it was pretty much your typical hoarder house," said Mary Passaglia, a public health officer for the village, which carried out the cleanup after the owner was convicted of several ordinance violations.

John Wuerffel, 62, was arrested for not having a Firearm Owners Identification Card, but was released a few hours later after posting $100 bond, authorities said.

Elderly woman and 44 dogs die in Ocala mobile home fire

Excerpt from CF News 13: (click for entire article)

An elderly woman and 44 of her dogs died in a massive mobile home fire Sunday, Marion County firefighters said.

Crews arrived at the scene around 8:45 p.m., within four minutes of getting the initial call, to find flames shooting from the roof of the home.

Tom Harrell is devastated he couldn't save his neighbor, Sigreid Bigos, 75, who is better known as Dottie.

“She was a good friend. Very special. And I'd come over and help her all the time,” Harrell said.

Woman And Her 30,000 Lbs Of Stuff Get Evicted

Excerpt from The Consumerist: (click for entire article)

30,000 pounds of belongings stretched up and down the DC sidewalk. They all belonged to one woman who was evicted after she couldn't make rent.

The woman, a housekeeper unemployed for 2 1/2 years, was saving them to send back to relatives in South America. "I cried when I went to Mexico to see my family," she told the Washington Post. "Look at how they live. I feel it's my job to look out for them."

Elder Hoarding - Buried in possessions, a growing problem for elders and their families in Michigan

Excerpt from Michigan Probate & Estate Journal: (click for entire article)

The term "hoarding" has become more familiar as several television shows have begun to reveal the secret world of compulsive hoarding.  As the population ages, this condition will affect more elders.  Family members who may have put up with the hoarding tendencies of their mother or father in order to avoid conflict may not be able to do so when the hoarder ages and their problem becomes a safety issue.

Compulsive hoarding is the inability to discard possessions.  The hoarder brings more items into the house through compulsive shopping, yard sales or collecting than he or she discards.  A hoarder will often find value and usefullness in items that others would see as trash, leading to hoarding of empty boxes and cans to old newspapers and coupons.  However, often the hoarder has great emotional attachment to the possession or finds the idea of throwing the possession away extemely distressing.   Animal hoarding is another type of hoarding problem as an elder  acquires unusual numbers of pets often for companionship and the need to be useful.  This too creates dangerous conditions as the elder is overwhlemed by the care of the animals leading to unsanitary conditions and financial hardship.

Woman found dead amid clutter became compulsive

Excerpt from Las Vegas Review-Journal: (click for entire article)

The hot, arid desert was a poetic refuge for Billie Jean Davis, a single mom recovering from a divorce.

She fled to the valley from Wyoming in 1970 with her young son, Charles, to be near her parents.

Davis, an environmentalist, declared her love for the desert's natural beauty with vivid descriptions of yucca and Joshua trees, white stone mountains and wildflowers in published pieces that depicted her new life in the Mojave.

"Drier and wider now this night, asks me to remove my sweater and stay. The desert is home," she wrote in her poem "Homing."

Then she met a man named Bill James at a Sierra Club mountain climbing class. She became Billie Jean James shortly thereafter.

Hoarder's Body Found Under Mounds Of Trash In Home

Excerpt from The Consumerist: (click for entire article)

Four months after her death, the missing body of 67-year old woman was found buried underneath the piles of thrift store nicknacks in her home that had come to define her life. Her husband finally found her, her feet sticking out under a mountain of garbage and geegaws.

Dogs that had been enlisted to find bodies during 9/11 had previously been unable to uncover the body in the house, despite multiple searches.

Hoarding behavior may signal OCD

Excerpt from Media dis&dat: (click for entire article)

The odd behavior has been thrust into the public eye on cable networks, with TLC's Hoarding: Buried Alive, A&E's Hoarders and Animal Planet's Confessions: Animal Hoarding. But it's more common than you might think.

"It's called a hidden epidemic," said Megan O'Bryan, an Indianapolis clinical psychologist who specializes in obsessive-compulsive disorder and hoarding. "Hoarders are reluctant to reveal it. They are embarrassed by it but don't want to seek treatment."

Hoarders shouldn't be confused with slobs or people who collect things like dolls or Michael Jackson memorabilia, even if they fill up a room. Hoarding is considered a mental disorder although whether it's a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder is up for debate.

Hoarding often goes undiagnosed for decades until people reach middle age and their clutter mounts to high levels even to the average pack rat.

"They can find a reason to keep almost anything," O'Bryan said.