Hoarding Disorder (Compulsive Hoarding): A Comprehensive Literature Review and Professional Training to Prepare Clinicians to Treat Problematic Hoarding

Clinicians have observed hoarding behaviors for many years, but only recently have the behaviors described as compulsive hoarding become thoroughly studied. Research on compulsive hoarding has grown exponentially in the past ten to fifteen years and much has been learned about the phenomenology of the disorder. Recent prevalence studies suggest that compulsive hoarding occurs as frequently as other common psychiatric disorders, affecting between 1.5%-4.6% of the population at any given point in time. Despite increased attention and understanding by clinicians and investigators, the gap between research and clinical practice remains wide. Few training opportunities exist for clinicians interested in competently treating this population. This doctoral project seeks to fill that gap by providing an extensive review of the literature currently available on compulsive hoarding and then disseminating the knowledge base to clinicians in the form of a didactic and experiential training. The training was designed to familiarize clinicians with the phenomenology of compulsive hoarding, its clinical characteristics, comorbid conditions, its relationship to OCD, as well as how to utilize evidence-based approaches in treating the disorder. The PowerPoint presentation was developed utilizing adult learning theory principles as well as well recent research on the effective dissemination of evidence-based treatments and is intended to be both experiential and didactic