This paper explores “Treatment of Compulsive Hoarding: A Case Study” published by Lilit Pogosian in 2010. Pogosian claims that the subject, “Dee”, had a successful intervention using specific CBT strategies and individualized exposure and response prevention (ERP) specially targeted to treat the characteristic features of compulsive hoarding. The progress Dee makes during the study suggests that the treatment plan described provides better results and response to treatment in patients with compulsive hoarding as a subset of OCD, in comparison to typical CBT, as past research has shown that patients usually show a resistance to treatment compared with OCD patients without hoarding behaviors. When looking back at this case study it is important
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She first starts sorting and making a decision on each item, to begin building a habit of discarding items. She starts working on her car, each day bringing in several boxes of clutter, which she spends two and a half to three hours a day sorting through. Her daily homework was to put saved items in their designated places at home. During first week would sort through one box every hour. She was reported to have the most difficulty deciding on personalized items. Emptying her car lasted more than a week. She started on the computer room in her house which took two weeks to remove clutter entirely. By the end of the fourth week she was able to sort through one box every 15 minutes and was discarding 90% of the items. For the process of ERP was asked questions which would challenge her erroneous beliefs about items and assist in cognitive …show more content…
The study treats Dee’s compulsive hoarding as the main feature of OCD, as no other symptoms are present. It is also stated that OCD paired with hoarding is more resistant to treatment than non-hoarding OCD patients. The DSM-V now has compulsive hoarding disorder as its own diagnosis, specifying as part of the criteria, “The hoarding symptoms are not restricted to the symptoms of another mental disorder (e.g., hoarding due to obsessions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).” It is now understood that people with hoarding behaviors can still have an OCD diagnosis, but unlike those with a true hoarding disorder, these individuals have specific obsessions not directly related to the hoarding itself, but still inadvertently result in the accumulation of possessions. In addition, unlike people with hoarding disorder, individuals affected by OCD-based hoarding have no particular interest in the items they accumulate, and don’t typically set out to acquire excessive amounts of a specific item or items, which differs from the previous description of hoarding as a subset of OCD and contradicts with numerous aspects of the theoretical model that goes into the treatment of hoarding in OCD patients. Rather than OCD, I think that Dee seems to fit the criteria for what is now known
She first starts sorting and making a decision on each item, to begin building a habit of discarding items. She starts working on her car, each day bringing in several boxes of clutter, which she spends two and a half to three hours a day sorting through. Her daily homework was to put saved items in their designated places at home. During first week would sort through one box every hour. She was reported to have the most difficulty deciding on personalized items. Emptying her car lasted more than a week. She started on the computer room in her house which took two weeks to remove clutter entirely. By the end of the fourth week she was able to sort through one box every 15 minutes and was discarding 90% of the items. For the process of ERP was asked questions which would challenge her erroneous beliefs about items and assist in cognitive …show more content…
The study treats Dee’s compulsive hoarding as the main feature of OCD, as no other symptoms are present. It is also stated that OCD paired with hoarding is more resistant to treatment than non-hoarding OCD patients. The DSM-V now has compulsive hoarding disorder as its own diagnosis, specifying as part of the criteria, “The hoarding symptoms are not restricted to the symptoms of another mental disorder (e.g., hoarding due to obsessions in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder).” It is now understood that people with hoarding behaviors can still have an OCD diagnosis, but unlike those with a true hoarding disorder, these individuals have specific obsessions not directly related to the hoarding itself, but still inadvertently result in the accumulation of possessions. In addition, unlike people with hoarding disorder, individuals affected by OCD-based hoarding have no particular interest in the items they accumulate, and don’t typically set out to acquire excessive amounts of a specific item or items, which differs from the previous description of hoarding as a subset of OCD and contradicts with numerous aspects of the theoretical model that goes into the treatment of hoarding in OCD patients. Rather than OCD, I think that Dee seems to fit the criteria for what is now known