Hoarding Among A Sample Of Patients Attending The General Psychiatry Outpatient Clinics

Abstract

SUMMARY H oarding is poorly understood disorder that characterized by difficulty discarding and excessive acquiring a large amount of possessions resulting in clutter which interferes with the individual’s ability to use his/her home. Although hoarding is often considered a symptom of obsessive– compulsive disorder (OCD), and is included in most structured interviews and questionnaires of OCD symptoms, such as the Yale–Brown Obsessive– Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) and the Obsessive–Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R) it is not directly mentioned in DSM-IV-TR or in ICD-10 as a typical symptom of OCD. Instead, ‘‘the inability to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value’’ is one of the eight current criteria for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) in DSM-IV-TR. By contrast, the equivalent diagnostic category in ICD-10, Anankastic Personality Disorder, does not include such a criterion.It is now considered a separate entity in DSM-5.