Recognizing and Treating Hoarding Disorder: How Much Is Too Much?

The first clinical guide to this psychiatric illness, officially recognized by the DSM in 2013. Everybody has heard the statements “she’s a pack rat” or “he’s a hoarder,” but how many of us really know what that means? Pathological hoarding was first formally conceptualized as a syndrome separate from OCD in the early 1990s, yet it wasn’t until 2013 that hoarding received formal psychiatric diagnostic criteria in the DSM. How can a mental health professional who sees clients in an office determi