A&E’s new series, Hoarders, premiered Monday, August 17th at 10:00 EST. This show gave the audience into the ugly world of hoarding often not visible to the outside world. Hoarding is a subset of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, a condition affecting millions of people world wide. Hoarders have a very difficult time throwing things away, and will keep things for years until their houses are so filled with items it becomes difficult and dangerous to live and function normally. As a result, Hoarders often become isolated from society and focus on things within their environment.
Hoarders usually keep everything, and feel extreme emotion if forced to throw things away. For example, a hoarder may keep every piece of mail sent to them, regardless of it’s practical use. Over years rooms start to fill up with things non-hoarders may consider useless. Hoarders do not keep the items because they use them, they keep the items because of some emotional need the items represent, or because of the guilt they would experience by throwing away the object. For a Hoarder, throwing away a piece of junk mail may be a sicking experience, so much the Hoarder may become physically ill.
A&E’s Hoarders showed two households, both with severe hoarding problems. The first home consisted of a man and women with children who were fearful of having their children taken away from them due to their excessive hoarding. The women had difficulties with compulsive shopping, while the man was a Hoarder. The combination of the two left the home a disturbing, unsafe mess. The real issue was the safety of the young children in the home, which was the main concern of their parents. They had a choice, clean the mess up, or live in fear of someday loosing the kids. They were already reported for the excessive mess, and lived in fear an inspector could come any day and take the kids away. Now, for the first time, there was a dire consequence to their hoarding, which acted as a trigger for change.
The second home was far more disturbing, as the elderly women living within hoarded food. As food in time spoils, it becomes a health hazard. The women would keep things for months and years past the expiration date, and still argue the food was good. She had a extreme difficulty throwing old food away, even when it was clearly rotting. The women’s reasons for keeping the food was to be self reliant, and to never throw out food. She wanted to be ready in case of hard times, and to do so, required massive amounts of food. The women was facing a future death of food poisoning, and did not want to face her behavior. The images of her home were truly disgusting, and were clearly a more severe case of Hoarding.
While the show did give an accurate portrayal of Hoarding, there was very little therapy provided. A clinical psychologist visited the lady from the second home, and did work with her to try to change her behavior, but she was not undergoing therapy. None of the homes provided were in therapy during the taping of Hoarders. This is a shame to me, as this was a perfect time to not only get them therapy, but to show the audience how therapy is conducted. An audience member who may know someone who is Hoarding may get ideas on how to better help them, and what therapy would take. A&E did state, however, that both homes were in therapy or going to go to therapy once taping had ended. Without accurate therapy, the Hoarders will continue to hoard, as the behavior patterns have not been broken.
Overall, the show did a good job showing the audience how live exists within a Hoarders world. After seeing images of spoiled food in mass, the audience will never look at Hoarders in the same way again.
Visit the Hoarders Website Here.
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