TOPIC: Behavior

What About All This Stuff?

What About All This Stuff?

It’s that time of year to find a place in our homes and closets for the gifts we received or purchased over the holidays. That usually requires making space by cleaning out and giving away other things. But for some 1 to 2 percent of the U.S. population who suffers from compulsive hoarding syndrome this is an impossible task.

According to Gail Steketee, a professor of social work and a clinical researcher at Boston University, who has been looking at compulsive hoarding since the early 1990s with Randy Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College in Massachusetts “mild” hoarding begins around age 18, becomes “moderate” after eight years or so and “extreme” a decade later, around age 35.

In her January 4, 2012 article, Hoarding: How Much Stuff is Too Much?, Mary Mihaly points out we rarely heard about hoarding a decade ago but now this behavior has captured our attention and is the subject of at least three cable television shows and hoarders frequently appear on popular talk shows.  “It’s because everyone has stuff,” says Gail Steketee, Ph.D., author of Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things. “We all have a relationship with our stuff, and we can see ourselves in the issues of hoarders.” The social climate, too, encourages Americans to accumulate: “There’s a lot of pressure to purchase things, to own things.”

In his book, Getting Over OCD: A 10-Step Workbook for Taking Back Your Life, Jonathan S. Abramowitz, PhD offers a 10 step treatment program which is invaluable in the diagnosis and treatment of Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD). This well researched, proven approach has helped many people move beyond the anxiety that has kept them stuck in such behaviors as hoarding among many others.

See below the continuing education course based on Abramowitz’s book here at www.GenesisCE.org. The course helps Mental Health Professionals fulfill CE credits and is available for Psychologists, LCSW, LPC, LMFT, LMHC, LSSP and more: approved by APA, ASWB, NBCC, NAADAC and most states for School Psychology.

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