Hoarding IS a mental illness, and this is 100% classic hoarding. It is treatable. Treating it appropriately is NECESSARY to prevent it reoccurring - and to save the person's life, as well as the lives of more animals. Lousy, lousy situation - for the animals first, of course, because they are truly innocent, but also DANGED sad for the people who are afflicted.
Anyone Else See This?
i think this goes beyond BYB......how can anyone human do this to an animal....
http://www.dogster.com/the-scoop/ro...-07032012_Dogster_newsletter&utm_medium=email
i hope they get.........i don't know....NOTHING would be good enuff IMO
http://www.dogster.com/the-scoop/ro...-07032012_Dogster_newsletter&utm_medium=email
i hope they get.........i don't know....NOTHING would be good enuff IMO
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This is true - especially 'getting more animals when they're cleaned out'. I wasn't going to touch on it, but removing all the animals almost never works in cases of real hoarding. Leaving some and intensive therapy CAN, especially if there's a desire to do better there. It just takes time and supervision and the resources for that aren't there. Or something.I didn't say it was never mental illness. . .just that it's not ALWAYS mental illness. I have met hoarders who definitely showed signs of it being a mental illness. And I've met other people who "hoarded" animals like this and it was not noticably a mental illness. Just a situation that got out of control and they don't have the life skills to do anything about it. Usually true hoarders will get more animals (or whatever they're hoarding) right away after getting cleaned out, but those who aren't true hoarders don't.
There has been a run on people being called hoarders lately because they're 'over their head' with animals, based on numbers or finances or etc. The thing is, hoarding has specific diagnostic criteria. One of those is being delusional about the state of the animal - that they're 'saving them', and they're just fine, even if they're obviously **Not**. Another is that hoarding is an obsessive-compulsive disorder - and the urge to get more animals is a compulsion, not just a 'I should'.And obviously the goal of treatment for hoarders would be to help them stop acquiring more animals/objects etc. I don't think it makes sense to say that a person could never have been a hoarder just because they are in recovery. But anyway, I don't think the article even mentioned if the person acquired more dogs after the rescue or not.
Neither of those mean that the case discussed here isn't a hoarder; it's fairly obvious that they are. But having a large number of animals (or objects) and living in bad conditions can be caused by other disorders - even if they're in crap up to the owners knees. Really bad depression is common - that soul-sucking apathy that won't let people DO anything. Anxiety disorders also apply (too scared to ask for help).
Hoarders CAN recover, yes, absolutely, but when the situation only looks like hoarding, but the motivation ISN'T the Obsessive-Compulsive accumulation of hoarding, they need treated for what is wrong. Not for hoarding. So what they're recovering from is different, and recognizing those difference is important. Still mental illness, abso-tively. People just need to be aware enough not to diagnose it all as hoarding.
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