Hoarders Need Help

Hoarders need compassion and understanding, not ridicule
In the dictionary, the definition of hoarding is accumulating more than one's current requirements. This could be the stockpiling of food, pets, books, and yard sale buys. Articles that wouldn't seem significant to us mean the world to these sufferers, and disposing of just one small item as a button, a marble, or even an empty bag wreaks havoc and creates trauma in these individuals.
We all know about how a drug addict and an alcoholic are defined as. They have an illness that many at one time thought it was plain degeneracy. Now that medical science has given it a reason why this happens, it is considered by most to be understood. After all, you wouldn't look down upon someone that had cancer would you? But hoarding, thanks to programs like A&E's "Hoarders" is outing this tragic subject, to allow viewers to see that these are not dirty people, but sick people, and they suffer enormously. They need help.
This is a quote from A&E's website.
Each 60-minute episode of Hoarders is a fascinating look inside the lives of two different people whose inability to part with their belongings is so out of control that they are on the verge of a personal crisis. Whether they're facing eviction, the loss of their children, jail time, or divorce, they are all desperately in need of help. In a fly-on-the-wall style, we'll capture the drama as experts work to put each on the road to recovery. But cleaning is just the first step, like taking drugs away from an addict. The healing won't be easy. For some, throwing away even the tiniest thing -- a sponge, a button, an empty box -- is so painful that they will not be able to allow the cleaning to be completed, no matter the consequences. For others, professional help and an organizer's guidance give them the strength to recover. At the end of each episode we'll find out who has been able to keep their hoarding behavior at bay and who, despite help, is still lost inside this painful disease.
The town has fined one woman who was documented in a segment because her house is uninhabitable by the county standards. She is threatened with eviction, and still refuses to try to get help, as each reminder and plea from family members and friends soon turn into confrontations, lest the hoarder believe that others are out to get them. On the contrary because all they want to do is help the person who is afflicted.
An elderly woman was confronted about her lifestyle and unsafe habits, and threatened with eviction by the county as well because fire department crews couldn't rescue her ailing husband when he suffered a heart attack. The entrances and the back door area were blocked by debris, which of course the sufferer would never acknowledged it as debris. She never accepted the fact that here husband could have died because of the blockage. The husband was put up in a local hotel because the present living conditions added to his weakened condition. This woman would visit her husband at the hotel, even paid for the cost of the hotel, with their meager finances waning, but refused to clean up her act, so to speak.
This is where counseling comes in, an intervention of sorts. Qualified psychologists aid the person in seeing their hoarding as an illness. Most people have suffered from some type of traumatic abuse at sometime in their lives. One woman was told daily by her own my mother how she was unwanted, and how the child had ruined the mother's life. This woman was born in the 1940's, when unwedded mothers were cast in a very dark light. At one time, the suffering woman became pregnant and the father abruptly left her after being told of her pregnancy. It would seem that these people need deep analysis and sympathy, compassion and understanding, and an avenue to vent and mourn the sour emotions that are deeply embedded within.
Alarmingly, the New York Humane Association advises:
Some hoarder-run entities now have added a new category to their title or list of so-called "services," and that is "hospice." Never has a bigger chill gone through the veins of those who have had the experience of dealing with hoarders. To think that in addition to all the unfortunate animals that already fall prey to them, hoarders are now reaching out like bizarre grim reapers for the elderly and enfeebled animals, or in some cases seriously ill younger animals -- all of who may be in pain or distress. Yet, these hoarders now advertise their "hospice" as some sort of magical nirvana alterative, offering false comfort to distraught people struggling with the emotional distress of humanely ending the lives of their beloved animals. The hoarders attempt to distract and dissuade these individuals from the reality and necessity for that final and difficult, but humane decision. Why? Because of a hoarder's own inability to deal with that reality.
Frightening, but true. Let's get them some help. If you know of someone that suffers, please try this site:
http://www.hoarders.com