Hoarders

I like this show. It helps a few people And their families who need help. It also shows that it is a mental disease so hopefully people will have more compassion for the disorder.

When it was originally filmed I always wanted them to help the families paint and fix the house a bit. But I am in 3 episodes of the 2019 episodes and so far that hasn't happened. I hope there are some happy episodes. That's what I liked to see from earlier episodes. When the family triumphs.

I understand why this show might make people feel depressed. My sister is an early stage hoarder and she says it gives her anxiety to watch. For me it motivates me to clean and declutter.

When I first tuned in to this show, I wasn't sure what to expect. After getting a degree in psychology I thought we would see more on screen therapy. The stories of these people are amazing. While some fully acknowledge their illness, the really compelling stories are the ones where the person is in complete denial about their hoarding. I would like to see more of the cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) being done with the people to see how effective cleaning up the hoard over such a short amount of time is for their psyche. Nonetheless - this is definitely worth a watch. It can be downright disgusting and disturbing (people who hoard animals drives me bonkers) -but it gives you insight in to the world of hoarding and obsessive compulsive disorders. I think many of the participants (unwilling and willing) have plenty of other psychiatric illnesses which make it more difficult to deal with, so it's interesting to see if the two can be teased apart.

OCDs and especially hoarding fascinate me. As this is a US reality TV series, I didn't have high hopes to begin with. However, the concept of involving a psychologist into the process and providing after care funds for the participants gave me a positive surprise.

In the first few seasons, the series really focuses on the mental part of the hoarding. You can see how hard it is for people to let go and they even fail some times. There isn't always success. I really did like that part.

However, in the following seasons it gets worse and worse. The show is trying to have more sensational cases, more extreme filth or huge family fights. The last season is not a show about hoarding anymore, but a very weird mash up of not well done Horror, Home Remodel, Makeover, Family Crisis. While I found it not helpful to show the family the "stat the house is in" in season 5, in my opinion it is completely useless to spend a night in the home and explain to a shaky hand cam how scary and disgusting it is.

The first few seasons are a nice watch, but I would recommend to stop after Season 4. Nothing good coming after that.

Having a full-blown hoarding mother and some tendencies myself, a friend suggested I watch a few episodes in order to better see how it affected me as a child and how serious it is. At first I thought it might be the typical exploitative program, but after watching the first episode I was having useful insights. In each episode one or two situations are introduced. Then, some kind of intervention is attempted, usually in response to some external event like threatened eviction or the city being called in. We are able to see how professional organizers approach the hoarders, and how the hoarders respond. In particular, we see all the ways they deny or minimize the problem and thus stay stuck in it.

After watching several episodes, I brought my mother over so we could watch together. Each episode turned into a few hours of regular pausing and discussion of what we were seeing. It allowed more objectivity, since we were partly discussing other people rather than ourselves. My mother reported that she had felt enthusiasm and done some cleaning of her own house later that day. There was one professional organizer who had an amazing attitude of respect for the hoarder, not pressuring but simply assisting where possible, in order to achieve the most long-term change. I will always remember her as the model for how I can be towards my mother, rather than judgmental and ultimately harmful towards her progress, not that feeling such things isn't completely understandable.

Even though the show is probably mere entertainment for most people (nothing wrong with that!), it's great that it also serves such a valuable role for viewers who also deal with hoarding as well.

Hoarders is a well-crafted reality TV show that follows sufferers of hoarding disorder as they face a personal crisis that forces them to clean up their hoard. The show offers the help of a cleanup crew and psychologist and in return the hoarder agrees to have his or her personal circumstances utilized for entertainment purposes. The stories are compelling on two levels--first there is the battle against the hoard itself, generally the cleanup crew has only a few days to eliminate the hoard. More importantly, however, there is the battle that the hoarder wages in his/her own psyche to let all the stuff go and overcome their mental illness.

Hoarders is the type of show that you watch and wonder why you can't turn it off--it is all about garbage, after all. The reason however, is that it is about much more--there is real drama, because if these people do not get over their problems their lives are wrecked. Thus, the conflicts are real and compelling and draw you in.

The big problem with the show, however, is that it is likely not advisable to treat a mental illness this way--shock therapy and radical eradication of the hoard. Usually this just causes big trauma. It is quite telling that the majority of the hoarders seem to fail in their quest to get over their illness and relapse often without even partaking of the aftercare therapy that is offered. There is of course no ethical dilemma in cleaning up a hoard, but their certainly is if you are a licensed therapist and you engage in questionable treatment in pursuit of a different interest. I guess that in many cases, the hoarders on the show have reached a crisis point and the show does offer a way out, so perhaps the show is redeemable in that aspect.

This show is perfectly valid as compelling reality TV, and can certainly be watched that way. It also certainly raises awareness of hoarding. Beyond that however, you can't help but feel a little guilty for watching a person's life disintegrate because they had no other choice but call the Hoarders crew or face horrible consequences.