Happy Sunday Everyone,
Today I'm sort of discussing a television show I ran across. Last week, we started our topic on Physical, Social and Mental well-being. We are into the mental well-being portion of this topic and started discussing various steps towards a healthy mind. However, today I'm deviating away from the steps a little to talk about this show I came across because it's becoming the latest trend in mental illness.
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The show is called Hoarders. It's a very entertaining show that enters the lives of people and their homes because they have been classified by family members as hoarders. They send a camera into the homes of these people as well as various mental health doctors in an attempt to get them to clean up their home and to understand why they have become hoarders. Most of the time, the hoarding according to the professionals come from various triggers in their lives such as loss or loneliness and even illness. Their family members are completely fed up with the living conditions and have basically put the hoarder on blast for the world to see.
Some of the people hoard due to shopping, some hoard food and others even hoard animals. The homes are in the worst shape imaginable. There is disease in many of the homes due to dead rodents, some have so many pets that they died and became burried in the home, some had food stored for years and refused to throw it away thinking they could still eat it. Clean up crews entered many of these homes and removed tons and tons of trash.
Some hoarders were at risk of losing their homes, some were at risk of losing their children, some family members walked out on them, never to return and the most drastic for some was possible death due to the terrible and diseased conditions. According to the professionals that attempted to assist these people, they were afflicted with mental illnesses. However, they always start the program by letting you know that not enough is known about hoarding to effectively help these people. Many of them face long term therapy and some simply refuse the entire process.
Many of these hoarders are professionals. There were teachers, some worked for the Government, some were on disability and some basically worked to support their hoarding habit. But, the thing that struck me after getting over the entertainment factor and the shear shock of seeing such living conditions was a little personal and historical to me. I remember as a child living in a really nice family oriented neighborhooh in Long Island, New York. Most of the families kept foster children and many of the homes were occupied by complete families containing a mother and a father. Usually the father worked and the mother tended the home.
However, every so often, you would see the State go into those homes and remove the children stating that the living conditions were not adequate. Basically, the state pretty much tagged these homes and the occupants as nasty and disgusting. That was it, no help was offered, no therapy was offered, they were just tagged as plain and simple nasty. The thing that really grated at my nerves after watching this show and then thinking back to my childhood is that now, these professionals are trying to make inadequate living and nastiness a mental disease. The question that ran through my mind was that if I did not wash dishes for a year and simply decided it was because I did not want to, would that make me a hoarder or would it simply make me lazy?
So, I'm asking everyone that reads this blog to look at the show when you have a moment and send me your comments on what you think. Should this hoarding become the newest mental illness fad?
Tomorrow, we will get back to our regular topic and please send your comments. You can post them below.
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Until Then.
Blessings, Peace & Prosperity
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