DANVERS — Not long ago, a local woman with a serious hoarding problem was rushed to the hospital after a pile of her belongings fell on top of her. She was trapped for a day before someone found her.
"We've had a couple of really bad cases that people in the community knew were hoarding, but they didn't know who to call or where to go," says Shelly Luckenbill, the protective services program manager at North Shore Elder Services in Danvers. "Unfortunately we only get there when there's a crisis; when the courts are involved or there's an eviction notice."
In response to what it sees as a growing problem, Elder Services has formed a hoarding task force, which is working to give people with hoarding issues more options for help.
Last year, 11 to 15 percent of the entire case load for elder protective services in Danvers, Salem, Middleton and Marblehead involved hoarding, Luckenbill said. Seven individuals were "at imminent risk of having irreversible medical problems, losing their homes or being evicted as a direct result of their hoarding," according to NSES.
Seniors are reported for protective services if there is serious abuse, neglect or some crisis that requires intervention. Too often these days, that crisis is a critical accumulation of too much stuff.
"Generally we get called from someone who's seen the condition of an apartment and say, 'Wow, this is unbelievably horrible,' " says David Greenbaum, the acting health agent on the Salem Board of Health and a member of the new task force.
The board of health won't always take action if there's a bad case — it's a fine line between invasion of privacy and public health issue.
"It really depends of what they're hoarding," he said.
If there is a lot of combustible material, it could be a fire hazard; if there are things blocking entrances and exits, it could be a problem for fire or police, or other tenants.
"If they are hoarding food and it's rotting, it becomes a public health issue; if it's animals it can become a public health issue," he said.
The task force began meeting this year and has about 30 members from all over the spectrum — health department officials, fire, police, social workers, hospitals and others — and it meets every other month.
The group has organized training for therapists — there are very few in the area qualified to treat hoarding behavior, Luckenbill said — started help groups for families, and brought more organization to the effort.
"One thing that's been most successful has been the collaboration piece. We now know who is out there, the limitations and who to call to ask questions," Luckenbill said.
A mental disorder
Hoarding is considered a mental disorder, where a person is constantly acquiring new things and refusing to throw anything away. Right now it is classified as a subtype obsessive compulsive disorder, but there is discussion of making it its own disorder.
One way to describe it is "creativity run amok," says Dr. Randy Frost, a Smith College professor and hoarding expert, who is the author of "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things."
"A hoarder looks at an object and the world opens up," Frost said. "A bottle cap found in the trash might have an interesting shape, the color is interesting, they'll look at the hue, the way it reflects light. They'll imagine the uses, for an art collage or to plug a hole in something."
In general, hoarders tend to be very smart and very creative. Many are members of MENSA, an international genius club, Frost said. However, as a result of these obsessions and fascinations with things, hoarders have a disorganized array of possessions that ultimately interfere with their ability to function.
In 80 to 90 percent of cases the "stuff is actively collected," Frost said. Also, hoarders ascribe high value to many things that are worthless or even unsanitary and have a very difficult time letting things go.
"We all have possessions that we imbue with a magical quality that is well beyond the actual value: a ticket stub, flowers given to us by a special person, a piece of wedding cake," Frost said. "People who hoard have exaggerated that normal behavior."
Luckenbill says hoarders she has handled have run the gamut of collecting. Some have hundreds of brand-new things still in boxes, others have piles of empty food cartons and containers, some have hundreds of magazines.
"There doesn't seem to be any theme. We have Dumpster divers and people in Marblehead who are Harvard grads," she said. "We have them all."
Hoarding behavior has been documented in people as young as age 3, Frost said, but the disorder usually remains seemingly under control until a person is older and they've had the time and opportunity to collect. Seniors are most often associated with serious hoarding problems.
"Elder services are being inundated with hoarding cases," Frost says.
As to why hoarding on the North Shore seems more prevalent, "There is some debate about that," Luckenbill says.
One theory is older citizens are staying in their homes longer instead of being put in elder care homes. That gives more time to collect things, and more time for it to become a problem, she said.
Frost isn't convinced hoarding is actually happening more, only that people now know what it is and what to look for. The disorder wasn't even described until the 1990s, he said.
"It was underground for so many years, there wasn't even a word for it," he said. "Anytime there is a culture that has inexpensive, relatively easy-to-buy goods it's going to be easier to hoard," Frost says.
• • •
If you or someone you know has a hoarding problem, call North Shore Elder Services at 978-750-4540.
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