Community Chat

[Susan Louise]

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@Trinity11 wrote:

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@Susan Louise wrote:

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@Trinity11 wrote:

I find those shows very upsetting because clearly these people are mentally ill and are being taken advantage of when some show steps in under the guise of "helping" them.

They need a lot more help than any show is going to be able to give them. Using their sickness as a vehicle to entertain people who watch television is deplorable to me.

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@Trinity11  There are 2 hoarders in my family. I do not find it to be a source of 'entertainment', but a vehicle to learning and trying to help our own family members...

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I really think family members no matter how well intended have few tools to help a hoarder. We have two in our distant family that literally destroyed their home with garbage. All the "talk therapy" in the world won't touch a bad case of hoarding. These individuals need medical help.....whether it be medication or being placed in a clean environment. Watching television programs designed to induce "Oh, I can't believe the way they live," serves mostly the purpose of shock value for the audience. Helps with the ratings.....

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@Trinity11  I'm happy to leave it as something we agree to disagree

[Trinity11]

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@Susan Louise wrote:

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@Trinity11 wrote:

I find those shows very upsetting because clearly these people are mentally ill and are being taken advantage of when some show steps in under the guise of "helping" them.

They need a lot more help than any show is going to be able to give them. Using their sickness as a vehicle to entertain people who watch television is deplorable to me.

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@Trinity11  There are 2 hoarders in my family. I do not find it to be a source of 'entertainment', but a vehicle to learning and trying to help our own family members...

In fact, it is a shame that these shows aren't on more often and on more channels. There are millions of hoarders not only nationwide, but worldwide that desperately need help. Closing the door and closing ones eyes to the issue is not going to help anyone. This is one type of reality show that needs more airtime...not stuff like DWTS, and the Bachelor...just saying.

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I don't watch television other than for entertainment. Reality programming is not my idea of entertainment, though.

I don't believe that anyone but a staff of medical professionals can help a hoarder. I do not think family, no matter how well meaning, really can do much of anything. I have seen it up close and personal and it would be like knocking my head against a brick wall. Unless they want help and specifically ask a family member for it, they consider it an intrusion.

[Othereeeen]

Do you live in a nice clean orderly home?

What would it take for anyone, professional or not, to convince you to live like a hoarder? Could anyone "change" you?

Hoarders don't see the junkpiles. They don't realize they are surrounded by junk. Usually it's only when the township or city comes and threatens them with eviction that they act. And then, each peice of stuff is too valuable to part with, no matter how old, mold covered, urine soaked or worse.

I know a hoarder. Every flat surface is covered with stuff. Once something comes inside, it never goes back out ( with the exception of food waste, thank goodness).

He has moved several times. Each time, I gently say PLEASE keep this place neat and orderly. In no time, it is back to the hoard. He has plastic storage tubs, hundreds of them, that have been hauled around over forty years, with who knows whats inside them.

He says they are 'valuable". I say....when he dies, someone will hire a dumpster and haul it all away.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Before I had ever heard the word hoarder, I cleaned a friends home after his wife passed away. It was about 30 years ago.

I had never been in there home and it was shocking. I had to stand my ground to even throw away sticky tupperware containers.

These people liked to go to auctions and would buy boxes of stuff, bring them in the house and there the boxes would never be opened.

These were very sweet and wonderful people but they both had a severe problem.

I think some of these people are just lazy. Why would you throw trash on the floor when you could just put it in a trash bag.

But I would say for the most part, there is a mental problem or something tragic happened to them.

I can't imagine living like this but I have seen it first-hand. I would of never believed that people lived in a house full of trash.

[Mominohio]

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@Trinity11 wrote:

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@Susan Louise wrote:

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@Trinity11 wrote:

I find those shows very upsetting because clearly these people are mentally ill and are being taken advantage of when some show steps in under the guise of "helping" them.

They need a lot more help than any show is going to be able to give them. Using their sickness as a vehicle to entertain people who watch television is deplorable to me.

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@Trinity11  There are 2 hoarders in my family. I do not find it to be a source of 'entertainment', but a vehicle to learning and trying to help our own family members...

In fact, it is a shame that these shows aren't on more often and on more channels. There are millions of hoarders not only nationwide, but worldwide that desperately need help. Closing the door and closing ones eyes to the issue is not going to help anyone. This is one type of reality show that needs more airtime...not stuff like DWTS, and the Bachelor...just saying.

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I don't watch television other than for entertainment. Reality programming is not my idea of entertainment, though.

I don't believe that anyone but a staff of medical professionals can help a hoarder. I do not think family, no matter how well meaning, really can do much of anything. I have seen it up close and personal and it would be like knocking my head against a brick wall. Unless they want help and specifically ask a family member for it, they consider it an intrusion.

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Drug addicts and alcoholics consider it an intrusion as well, but they need intervention. If a show is the help they can get, so be it.

[scatcat]

There seems to be a few different levels of hoarding.  Those who have 30 bottlles of laundry detergent, 200 dolls, 300 Christmas ornaments etc.  Fairly clean, just has excess.  Then there are those who literally live in a garbage can.  Moldy food, animal waste, unusable toilets and sinks. garbage piled up past windows.  Pure filth, mold, spider webs etc.  The latter always saddens me when children and animals are involved. TLC has a few shows about people with mental illiness - hoarding and my 600# life to name 2. It's always nice to see a happy ending 

[bri20]

I have a hard time watching that show.  There's clearly a mental component to hoarding.  I think they exploit the hoarders that are on the show when they have a meltdown over things moving too fast or too much being thrown out.  

Maybe it's good for the family members who may not recognize hoarding as a mental disorder 

[sidsmom]

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@Susan Louise wrote:

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@Mominohio wrote:

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@Mj12 wrote:

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@SunValley wrote:

I believe these people have a mental or emotional disorder and showing this for TV viewing is beyond sad. I watched a few out of curiosity and couldn't handle it. By the time they get to this level of dysfunction a social worker sent in by a TV show is just triage. These people need long-term help. I too know a hoarder, a woman I worked with and it extended into her office cubical, and then she got into trying to round up feral cats. She was full of severe scratches and bites and spread disease to several co-workers. Management attempted to help her without effect. Made me realize how complex this disorder can be.

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@SunValley ITA.  I have never watched this show, I think it is cruel. 

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It sheds light on a problem and the one thing I do find lacking is there seems to be no follow up care and services for these people after the show wraps. 

I think if it brings awareness that gets someone in the situation some help, then it is worth being aired. Shedding light on issues and  Helping people isn't always pleasant.

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@Mominohio  There is follow-up care available for all of those that have been a part of the Hoarding shows. At the very end of each one there is text/info put up on the tv screen stating how each one had specific health care options available to them, where they were going (ie, if they could not move back into their home...some homes cannot be inhabited anymore, but torn down due to too much mold/poor/weak floorboards/ceilings/etc). Some have to go to assisted living facilities because they just aren't capable of taking care of themselves...the hopeless ones, so to speak. Others get intense counseling...especially those who have children...and they get counseling too.

I think I have watched every hoarding show there is...even ones made in the UK I have watched through the BBC or on you-tube...

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@Susan Louise

ITA.  I've watched so many of these shows.   

There was one in the last 3-4 months where an African-American woman was living in a home where her son committed suicide in their bathroom.  She put plants in the bathtub...kinda like a shrine in his honor. To make things more difficult, her husband came home from work & in the middle changing clothes, he suffered a heart attack & died.  For years, decades I believe, she never moved those trousers from the place where they laid.  Time froze....and her hoarding began.  When the counselor was talking through things, it was like this wall was melting around her...and a light went off.  Her life started over.  It was beautiful.  Very touching. 

[software]

I watch these hoarding shows sometimes hoping for a happy ending but there rarely is.

I'm more likely to watch the 600lb shows.    There is severe obesity in the women on my ex-husband's side of the family.   I worry about my daughter.   She's a bit overweight at age 24 but not obese, yet.    I can't figure out the mentality of eating to the point of nearly destroying their body.    Why is the only medical care AFTER the weight is on.   Can't we figure out & cure the obsession before you reach 600#?

[tsavorite]

The neighbor across the street from my parents home are big time hoarders.  They haven't let anyone in that home in over 25yrs....and when they open the garage door to enter the home thur it...OMY it is packed full ceiling to floor...with a very narrow asile directly to the inside door.  They hoard vehicles also...as many as they can park in the driveway in various states.  Packages arrive to front porch alot...the man comes out thur garage to get them and mail this way too.  

Now both of my parents have passed and we recently sold the home....I often wonder what will happen to this couple across the street?  They have no children and are rather old now.  Yrs ago one of our other neighbors got inside this home and said it was packed floor to ceiling....very sad.

Just around the conner from my parents old home a couple same age as my parents (the man worked for many yrs at same company as my father and we knew them) died in a house fire.  The fire department could not find a way inside the home!  All windows and doors were blocked by large piles to the ceiling of junk...photos of it were in our local paper.  This couple took care of their mentally handicapped daughter...she made it out of the home that day....her parents wouldn't leave their "stuff" she told police and died hiding in the bathroom.  It was unreal....tragic.