Author Names

Yaprak Çilem Yalçın Arslan1, Başak Bağcı2, Neslihan Gürz Yalçın2, Tunç Alkın2

1Dokuzeylü University, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry, 2Department

Introduction

Compulsive hoarding is a behavioral problem defined as the taking, collecting, hiding and accumulating of many unnecessary items or objects. Although it can be seen as a symptom in many psychiatric and neurological diseases, it is most frequently encountered in patients with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) (1). In this article, a OCD case followed in our clinic with symptoms of collecting and hoarding garbage is presented.

Case

A 57-year-old male patient was brought to our clinic with the complaint of collecting excessive amounts of garbage at home. It was learned from his environmental history that he had collected fifteen trucks of garbage and that he had been eating food thrown in the garbage for the last year. The patient's medical history included acute rheumatic fever (ARF). His family history also described his aunt collecting garbage. The patient's psychiatric evaluation revealed obsessions with cleaning, checking and hand washing, compulsive collecting garbage, and hoarding. In addition to meeting the diagnostic criteria for 0KB, the patient also met the "compulsive hoarding syndrome" (2). Fluvoxamine 300 mQ/Q, Quetiapine 75 mQ/Q treatment was initiated. The patient's weekly YBCS scores during his hospitalization were 26, 20, and 17. The MMPI test result was that he was immature, egocentric, dependent, expressed his anger indirectly and used the suppression defense mechanism, and was accompanied by major thought disorders. The neurocognitive test result was consistent with moderate cognitive impairment. The patient did not collect anything during his clinical follow-up and when he went on home leave. However, his preoccupations with collecting thoughts continued intensely.

Discussion

Hoarding behavior is seen in 18-33% of 0CD patients. Familial burden has been defined in 0CD patients with hoarding behavior. The presence of the diagnosis of 0CD in our case and the familial history of garbage collection are consistent with this information. The presence of an ARF history in our case is also consistent with the literature (3). The case is presented especially because of the large amount of garbage collection.

1. Steketee G, Frost R. Compulsive hoarding: current status of the research. Clin Psychol Rev 2003; 23: 905-27.
2. Frost R0, Krause MS, Steketee Hoarding and obsessive-compulsive symptoms. Behav Modif 1996; 20: 116-32.
3. Öztürk 0, Uluşahin Mental Health and Disorders Volume 2. Ankara, 2008; 489.