Skopidom: what does it mean and how to treat it?

An obsession with storing things for the purpose of stockpiling is a mental obsessive-compulsive disorder. To cure the patient, it is necessary to understand the causes of the hoarding.

Unlike a thrifty person who has a sense of self-preservation due to a forced lack of money, hoarding old, sometimes completely unusable things. Covetous is reluctant to part with items that have served their time... He litters his apartment with them. The greedy man prefers to wear old clothes.

For the sake of saving a few kopecks, curmudgeons are ready to go to the other end of the city in order to buy almost expired products. Accustomed to saving on any little things, they will save every penny, while the hoarders can have solid cash deposits in the bank.

Some may complain of chronic lack of money, although in reality they have no financial problems. Most often, over time, people inclined to hoarding do not change for the better: persistence transforms into stubbornness, caution into suspicion, frugality into tight-fistedness.

The following reasons can contribute to the development of hoarding:

• unfavorable heredity, a predisposition to anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder sometimes manifests itself in offspring in the form of abnormal hoarding;
• traumatic brain injury or previous encephalitis can damage the neurons responsible for making decisions;
• a traumatic situation associated with the death of a loved one, a close relative, a serious illness of the second half, or their own illness;
• a difficult financial situation in the past develops in some people the habit of counting every penny;
• the usual habit of saving money "for a rainy day";
• the total shortage of products and things in Soviet times could lay in the human subconscious the fear of the disappearance of goods from the shelves of outlets overnight;
• senile dementia also often becomes the cause of excessive greed, an abnormal tendency to pathological hoarding;
• personal characteristics of socially unadapted people and individuals prone to excessive frugality, prudence and stinginess; with the constant cultivation of these character traits, such people may well join the ranks of hoarders;
• the perception of the purchased thing as property and the unwillingness to part with it anymore, since it acquires special value in the eyes of the curmudgeon.

The miser are not always beggars. Most often, such people have a good income, but they do not invest or sell money. They prefer to hide them and save the previously accumulated property at any cost. These actions become profiling in the behavior. Subsequently, the following symptoms appear:

• irritability;
• irascibility;
• aggression;
• emotional instability.

Elderly people suffering from greediness due to senile dementia are characterized by the following clinical manifestations:

• slovenliness, indifference to one's appearance;
• distrust, lack of communication;
• social degradation;
• loss of realism of installations;
• apathy;
• lack of shame;
• clutter in the living area.

Such patients are reluctant to contact.

A sign of pathological hoarding is the preservation of old things that are unlikely to be useful in the future, as well as dumping them into a common heap indiscriminately and sorting. A person suffering from a thrift mania usually regrets money for food. He does not shy away from expired products covered with mold. Skopidom does not like to go to doctors and is stingy with the purchase of medicines.

Skopidomstvo is a serious mental disorder that requires the intervention of a qualified professional. Treatment is often hindered by the lack of understanding of their problem by the person suffering from a thrift mania. In difficult cases, assistance is provided in stationary conditions. For outpatient treatment, a psychotherapist may apply cognitive behavioral therapy.

It can be antidepressants, antipsychotics, vascular drugs. Medicines are used strictly as prescribed by a specialist and under his supervision. Taking short courses of medication improves overall well-being, but does not completely eliminate the phobia.

After pharmacological treatment, patients gain peace of mind. They become able to make contact. Then you should find an individual approach to them and try to negotiate.

If relatives or acquaintances suffer from hoarding syndrome, the following actions should be taken.

• You should convince the curmudgeon that that old objects tend to accumulate a lot of dust and deteriorate. The things may contain too many bacteria and parasites that are dangerous to human health.
• We need to persuade the hoarder to get rid of old magazines, worn clothes and other debris. You can refer to the beliefs of the Chinese that trash contains a lot of negative energy, which prevents positive energy flows from entering the house.In addition, if the item has not been used for three years, then it is not needed.
• When an unsuccessful attempt to reason with the patient you need to slowly throw things away, but so that the niggard himself does not notice their decrease, otherwise they will be replaced with incredible speed.
• A greedy person should be assured that there is no point in total savings. You need to update your things more often, periodically please yourself with gifts. From this, he certainly will not become impoverished, but he will experience the feeling of joy and satisfaction one hundred percent.
• Excessive stinginess often ends in failure. It is necessary to instill in a sick person that a pile of things is a great danger to human life in the event of a fire. Due to the blocked approach to the dwelling, the fire service and ambulance will not be able to enter the house or apartment and save people and their pets.

Helping the niggard consists in returning a person from a past life and immersing him in the present - realizing the value of his own being and finding his place in the real world.

About who is a hoarder and how dangerous he is, see below.