Profiles of the "hoarder"...more and more of these types of stories are appearing today...and it appears to be a growing concern....a disorder of it's own...BD 

We are all pack rats to some degree. We hoard, collect and buy more stuff than we have room to store.

But what if something in our brains made us incapable of throwing things out? Janie Allocca and Lorraine Brennan both live with a psychological disorder called compulsive hoarding -- an urge to hold on to even the most mundane objects, even when they take over their lives. Hoarding is considered a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but that may soon change. New research is finding that hoarding may be a special disorder completely separate from OCD.

At the Institute of Living, Tolin recently completed an Internet-based study on the harmful impact of hoarding. They were surprised to find the results were worse than other forms of anxiety and depressive disorders. In the most severe hoarding cases, there is a substantial economic burden, where those hoarders actually take themselves out of the work force.

Tolin said additional research on compulsive hoarding may show the disorder is more widespread than originally thought, "possibly as much as five percent of the population or 15 million people."

ABC News: The Tortured Lives of Compulsive Hoarders

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