Those with hoarding tendencies, beware!!! From the Newspapers, translated…
The elderly storing things unwilling to throw them out may be a precursor to dementia. A seventy-five-year-old elderly man who’d become unwilling to throw things out, and loved going out to collect the throwaway items such as plastic bags, or cardboard boxes, stacked the things he picked up from outside all over his place, the family member believed him to be unwasteful, and allowed him to continue doing it. But the collected materials started getting moldy and maggots were growing, the neighbors had had it and reported, and so, the family can only clean up the materials that the elderly collected, and took him to the hospitals. After the examinations, the formal diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was found, because this elderly lived in times of reduced resources, that was why he’d stacked things away, and the behavior reduced greatly after he was placed on medication.
The Elderly Collecting the Materials is NOT Hoarding
The primary psychiatrist of Zheng-Xing Hospital, Feng-Chang Yen pointed out, that the elderly’s collecting of materials is different than hoarding, because although the short-term memories of demented elderly is diminishing by the day, their long-term memories stay intact, and some of the elders would live in their pasts. But, in five, six decades ago, there’s a lacking in material, which caused the elderly to become unwilling to throw things out, and as they saw the things that were throw away on the streets, so long as they believed it to be valuable, they’d take the items home and stacked them up, and, unknowingly, they’d, accumulated a ton of things.
Yen said, that the elderly man’s stash of collected garbage, because there’s no longer enough room inside his home, he’d placed them outside, but the collected items became rotted and maggots started growing, the neighbors couldn’t tolerate it any longer. Thankfully, the elderly’s family took him to get seen by a psychiatrist, and he was diagnosed with dementia, other than prescribing the medications to reduce his hoarding behaviors, the family had helped the elderly get treated sooner, to reduce the pace of the deterioration process.
The Members of the Younger Generations Collecting the Materials IS a Form of O.C.D.
The manager of the psychiatry department in Veteran’s Memorial Hospital in Taipei, Liu said, that the younger people’s tendency to hoard is a form of O.C.D., the individual would be unwilling and unable to throw things away, and believed that the items will serve their purposes later on, and attached strong emotions to the items, and don’t believe their hoarding is a problem. The most often hoarded items are newspapers, old clothes, mail, or books, causing their residence to be messy, making it harder on the families or the neighbors.
Yen also stated, that these individuals get so focused on hoarding the items, they’d become uncleanly themselves, for instance, not liking to take showers, not shaving, or not changing their clothes, and couldn’t find a stable job, or hold a job long, in the end, becoming leeches that sucked the parents dry, but, there’s only a 0.2 percent of occurrences. It’s just, that at the onset, the symptoms would easily get ignored, or be interpreted as “using things until they’re completely done being used”, and the families usually put up with their behaviors until they can’t anymore, then, forced them to see a doctor.
If the Items Collected Were Repeats, Then, Immediate Hospitalization is Required
Yen said, he’d once treated a male in his thirties with hoarding disorder, he’d enjoyed picking up the thrown away appliances or high-tech things on the streets or in the recycle yards, and told his family that he would fix them up, or have someone fix them up, and the items can be used again. And although these appliances don’t go bad, but he’d stocked up the living room full, causing the family trouble.
The medications can’t root up the symptoms completely, it’s only good for reducing the compulsions of hoarding, but it can help the families with the troubles more or less. Yen suggested, that as the family members found there to be repeated items being collected, and if the individual took home more than ten items at a time, then, the family members should take the individual to the hospital.
So, here’s, another physical symptom that’s easily amiss for dementia, and, hoarding usually has to do with psychological needs, and not the physical like the cases showed, and, it’s really serious, but this is usually easily missed out on, because of the way the older generations grew up, in harder times, the families easily misinterpret their bringing items home as their not wanting things that can still be used to go to waste.
Life, the Obstacle Course 