Hoarding disorder: ‘sensory CBT’ treatment strategy shows promise
Rehearsing alternative outcomes of discarding through imagery rescripting shows promise as a treatment strategy for people who hoard, a study by UNSW psychology researchers has shown.
Hoarding disorder is a highly debilitating condition that worsens with age. People who hoard form intense emotional attachments to objects, accumulate excessive clutter, and have difficulty discarding possessions. Many avoid treatment.
People who hoard also experience more frequent, intrusive and distressing mental images in their daily lives, says Mr Isaac Sabel from the Grisham Research Lab, an experimental clinical psychology research group at UNSW Sydney.
“Negative memories and feared outcomes, such as an item rotting in landfill, catastrophic regret or the disappointment of a loved one, can induce anxiety and block the discarding process. Our best evidence-based treatments aren’t getting the outcomes we’d like,” says the psychologist and PhD candidate at UNSW.
“While one in three people who hoard may experience symptom improvement, less than a third of people experience clinically meaningful change. Additionally, there are high rates of dropout and treatment refusal.”
