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Hoarder problem growing in Oklahoma
Local and state officials are at a loss to explain the recent increase in cases of compulsive hoarding, but say better cooperation is needed to spot the largely hidden phenomenon before it becomes deadly or causes a health risk to neighbors.
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Hoarding is the excessive collection of items, along with the inability to discard them. Hoarding often creates such cramped living conditions that homes may be filled to capacity, with only narrow pathways winding through stacks of clutter. Some people also collect animals, keeping pets in unsanitary conditions.
Hoarding, also called compulsive hoarding and compulsive hoarding syndrome, can be a symptom of obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, many people who hoard don’t have other OCD-related symptoms, and researchers are working to better understand hoarding as a distinct mental health problem.
In the homes of people who engage in compulsive hoarding, countertops, sinks, stoves, desks, stairways and virtually all other surfaces are usually stacked with things. People who hoard animals may collect dozens or even hundreds of pets. They usually hoard animals that can be confined inside and concealed more easily.
Clutter and difficulty discarding things are usually the first symptoms of hoarding. These early indications of a problem usually surface during the teenage years. As an affected person grows older, he or she typically starts acquiring things for which there is no need or space. By middle age — when the condition is usually diagnosed — symptoms are often severe and difficult to treat.
Source: Mayo Clinic
Troy Skow, environmental field supervisor with the Oklahoma City-County Health Department, said inspectors have noticed an increase in hoarders in the past year. All involve women between the ages of 50 and 90, he said.
"It’s on the rise like crazy,” Skow said.
He said 60 to 70 percent of the worst residence complaints have involved a hoarder.
Two Oklahoma County women in recent months have been found dead in their homes, surrounded by stacks of items and filth. The outside of their homes didn’t seem unusual, but inside, the mold, trash and stacked items were hard to comprehend, officials said.
Terry Humphrey, director of the city of Edmond’s code enforcement division, last week told a House committee it took nine firefighters about two hours to get to a dead woman found in trash on the kitchen floor of an Edmond house a couple of months ago. Crews removed two tons of garbage from her home.
Water had been cut off to the house for six years, he said. She kept her urine in cups and took a bath in a neighbor’s house once a week. None of the lightbulbs in her house worked, Humphrey said.
Neighbors never complained, Humphrey said. She failed to show up for work, and her employer contacted police. Edmond officials would not identify the woman for this story.
Jeff Lytle, a neighbor of Kitty Lewis, whose decomposing body was found in May in a chair in her northwest Oklahoma City home, spoke of the frustrations of trying for years to get something done about her home.
"This not an isolated incident,” said House minority leader Danny Morgan, D-Prague, who asked for a study to look into how local and state agencies can respond to such cases.
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