Treating pediatric hoarding behaviors with an exposure response prevention model: A case study

Abstract

With TV shows such as Hoarding buried alive, mainstream media depictions of hoarding disorder are presented mostly in the context of adults. Interestingly, however, studies have found that the onset of hoarding disorder often occurs in childhood between the ages of 8 and 10 (Morris et al., 2016). Since hoarding can onset at a young age, early intervention could help decrease the long‐term impairment of the disorder. According to the Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders hoarding disorder is characterized as tending to collect items, difficulty in throwing items away despite the items' value or significance, and possessing an excessive number of items, leading to clutter (5th ed.; DSM–5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Despite a typical onset in childhood, most hoarding treatment and research has focused on adults because hoarding behaviors in youth can be challenging to identify due to family accommodation (Morris et al., 2016). In this article, we will review the prevalence of pediatric hoarding and provide a case example to describe clinical considerations for treating pediatric hoarding with exposure with response prevention (ERP).