Originally Posted by LovingIzabella
Hoarding is a mental illness. The reason for the hoarding has to be addressed before anyone can be "fixed". I sure hope your daughter gets help-with kids it can become a bad situation because they can take them away if they feel the children are in a dangerous or hazardous to their health conditions.
I wish her the best and you the strength to help her!
Hugs
April
Hoarding is a symptom of an underlying mental disorder. It isn't OCD in the true interpretation of that disorder according to the DSM IV, and that is why they are having a problem categorizing it. It overlaps with other disorders, so they have to determine if it is a result of a separate disorder like unresolved grief, or it's in a category all of it's own with sub categories.
People who suffer from OCD have set rituals that they follow because in their thinking it gives them control and order. They are aware they are doing the rituals, the problem is they don't know why. Getting to the underlying motivation for the rituals is difficult.
Hoarders have an emotional attachment to the things that they hoard. They have to recognize what that attachment is before they can begin the process of working to change. Their families can't help them because they don't understand or have the qualifications to help them. If their family were to go in and clean out the house, they haven't addressed the underlying issues, so the hoarder replaces everything that was removed. In order for a hoarder to change, they must go through the process of sorting through and discarding things that they have collected.