You’ve probably joked once or twice about growing old and becoming a crazy cat lady or something of the sort, but hoarding pets is a serious (and abusive) problem.
When we think of hoarders, we often think of stockpiles of useless junk that a person simply can’t live without, but some people aren’t hoarding everyday objects, but actual living things. This type of hoarding is devastating for the animals involved.
But while traditional hoarding and animal hoarding might be lumped together under the same umbrella at this point, a new study says that animal hoarding should be considered a separate mental disorder.
Obsessively hoarding objects effects just 1.5 percent of people across the globe and has often been classified as a subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
But in 2013, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) reevaluated its entries regarding OCD, making hoarding a stand-alone disorder.
Animal hoarding is listed as a subtype of hoarding according to the DSM, but researchers have recently published arguments in a journal called Psychiatry Research about why the subset should be recognized as a separate disorder.
While traditional hoarding sees an equal split between men and women, the study revealed that 73 percent of the animal hoarders interviewed were women.
