Reality TV shows such as A&E’s “Hoarders” and TLC’s “Hoarding: Buried Alive” do not accurately portray compulsive hoarding, according to a licensed counselor who has worked with hoarding clients since 1997.
“I call them ‘exploitainment,’ Debbie Stanley told Everyday Health. “Some are less offensive than others, but overall they tend to highlight examples of low or no insight, such as a client who cannot recognize that a food item is rotten, and they zoom in on squalor.”
Compulsive hoarding is associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which affects an estimated 1 in 100 adults in the United States. The condition is characterized by recurrent and intrusive thoughts, impulses or images that produce uneasiness and distress, leading to repetitive behaviors.
According to Stanley, most hoarders do not live in squalid conditions and are otherwise high-functioning individuals. Reality TV shows tend to portray hoarders as extremely dysfunctional and unhygienic.
“Unfortunately, the shows reinforce the perception of people who hoard as societal outsiders, which interferes with the viewer’s potential for empathy and leads to further marginalizing and hiding of hoarding behavior,” she explained. “The shows also do a disservice in their portrayal of treatment.”
Stanley added that pressuring or coercing a hoarder into quickly cleaning out their home “is cruel and unethical” because it suddenly strips an important coping mechanism away from them without any psychological support.
