Sunday, July 1, 2018

182/365/Books

My freelance life used to require the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as nearby reference. The newest incarnation, DSM-5, separated hoarding disorder from OCD into a distinct entity with the following diagnostic criteria: 
  1. Persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value.
  2. This difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to distress associated with discarding them.
  3. The difficulty discarding possessions results in the accumulation of possessions that congest and clutter active living areas and substantially compromises their intended use. If living areas are uncluttered, it is only because of the interventions of third parties (eg, family members, cleaners, or the authorities).
  4. The hoarding causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (including maintaining an environment safe for oneself or others).
  5. The hoarding is not attributable to another medical condition.
  6. The hoarding is not better explained by the symptoms of another mental disorder (eg, obsessions in obsessive-compulsive disorder, decreased energy in major depressive disorder, etc).
  7. Specifiers
    1. With excessive acquisition
    2. With good or fair insight
    3. With poor insight
    4. With absent insight/delusional beliefs
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9 comments:

  1. BridgettJuly 1, 2018 at 10:00 PM

    This is morbidly fascinating.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kim HanniganJuly 2, 2018 at 7:42 AM

    I might have to get this book.

    ReplyDelete
  3. SabineJuly 2, 2018 at 9:46 AM

    I think if I owned one I would spend way too much time diagnosing the people in my life.

    ReplyDelete
  4. CedarwaxwingJuly 3, 2018 at 1:19 PM

    The only one that saves me from being a hoarder according to the DSM-5, apparently, is "The hoarding causes clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning (including maintaining an environment safe for oneself or others)."

    ReplyDelete
  5. HelenJuly 3, 2018 at 3:10 PM

    I think if I owned one I would spend way too much time diagnosing myself.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. SusanJuly 7, 2018 at 8:16 PM

      And we'd acquire a few new symptoms in the process, right?

      Delete
  6. MaliJuly 3, 2018 at 5:21 PM

    I am definitely a pantry hoarder, suffering a fear of not having what I need. Ironically, when I need something, I sometimes can't find it because I can't be bothered looking through all the stuff I already have in the pantry. So I can, to a very small degree, understand the distress associated with not having enough X or Y. But I also know how good it feels to clean things out, so phew, I don't qualify.

    And yes, if I had this book, I'd do what both Helen and Sabine said.

    ReplyDelete

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