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BBC News
28-04-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Hoarding a UK 'mental health emergency'
Hoarding in the UK has become a "mental health emergency" which requires an urgent response, a leading social enterprise has End CIC has been supporting more than 300 people who hoard in Birmingham, helping them to declutter their homes and encouraging them to attend mental health support is an intervention project funded by Birmingham City Council, working closely with social suggest 2-5% of the UK population may have hoarding disorder, which the World Health Organisation classified as a mental health condition in 2018. However, Heather Matuozzo, founder of Clouds End CIC, says the true number will have risen significantly since the pandemic. "Anecdotally, and looking abroad, it's quite seriously on the increase, but we don't have the figures to prove it yet," she said."Our referrals are certainly increasing - it's a behind-closed-doors mental health emergency."You're meeting people who have got stuck in life, some with some really heartbreaking stories. We need to act now."Hoarding disorder is characterised as a relentless accumulation of possessions which leads to cluttered living spaces that compromise their use or safety. Typically, four out of 10 hoarders are over the age of BBC has been following the work of Clouds End over a period of four months as they deliver a "Chaos 2 Order" project across one of the first dedicated hoarding projects of its kind in Europe – and it also provides training to agencies who might encounter hoarding behaviour in the course of a home visit. Sue Sue began to hoard in her late teens. She told the BBC her parents separated when she was a young child; she lost contact with her father and felt increasingly isolated and traumatised as she grew began receiving support in 2020 after she had spent Christmas without any electricity because her power supply was being obstructed by her has since made huge efforts to clear her home in south Birmingham, but she recognises that it is a long haul."I've learnt that there is nothing to be ashamed of because hoarding isn't the problem," Sue said."It's been the solution to people who have other problems, traumatic experiences, and people who have OCD."To those going through this - please reach out to your GP or to charities – and ask for help."Sue found comfort in being able to move bags and boxes from her home to her car and onto a charity shop – it became a regular and cathartic journey – and now she joins hoarding support groups to help others who are at the start of their own decluttering process."The help that is available in communities is very hit and miss," she said."It's usually charities that help rather than councils, and if they do get involved, it can be housing officers or social workers who tend to come in all guns blazing, because they have a job to do – get your house cleared." David David is living in the home he grew up in. After his father's death, he became a carer for his mother who had dementia. Now he's living there on his own after she lounge is a riot of colour – on the floor of his living room are porcelain figurines, hundreds of yellowed newspapers and, balanced across the back of his settee, several thousand Barbie dolls."I started collecting them about eight years back. If I see one I haven't got, I buy one," the 65-year-old said."My doctor called at my house, but the entrance was blocked - that was the moment I got some help."A few years ago, David agreed to declutter his home with Ms Matuozzo's help, but he's now returned to intensive hoarding – with recent deliveries to his home of dozens of bars of soap, shampoos and piles of more boxed-up the BBC asked him, "Why is it all back?", David said: "Well, you can't cure me of being a hoarder, can you? I find it comforting." Extensive hoarding can pose a significant risk to 2021 in the West Midlands alone, six people have died and 33 injured in fires in hoarded properties, according to data from West Midlands Fire Matuozzo says decluttering has become a new form of social care, but she feels the government could implement a new national hoarding strategy that's widespread and also hopes to create a Hoarding Charter, which would see Birmingham become the first Hoarding Awareness city in the many individual local authorities have action plans, working alongside the NHS, but there is no national policy, or what Heather calls a UK "call to action", that recognises the deep-seated trauma people are facing every day. "We need a framework. If people don't have an idea of what to do, then very often they will just do nothing or shunt it on to somewhere else," Ms Matuozzo said."We need to be prepared for the future."The US is leading the way on this. In July 2024, a US Senate committee published a detailed report about the prevalence of hoarding in society, warning that it was approaching pandemic levels alongside an ageing are 14 million people in the United States exhibiting signs of hoarding disorder, the report states, and discussions are underway about new British Psychological Society published guidelines last year too, aimed at social care and NHS interventions. Sam Wainman is a PhD doctoral researcher in Hoarding Disorder at the University of Birmingham."Many people hoard in an attempt to keep hold of memories; sometimes the death of a loved one can be a trigger, but it can feel like control in a world that's out of control," Mr Wainman said."Professionals are trying their best in their own workplaces to forward policies, but we're not aware of anything national or government-led. This would need to be a focus first on the person and not their possessions."When asked about calls for a national strategy to tackle hoarding, a Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: "People with mental health issues are not getting the support or care they deserve, which is why we will fix the broken system we inherited as a government to make sure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health."So that people have the support they need when they need it, this government will recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers and invest £26m to open new mental health crisis centres." Follow BBC Birmingham on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
BBC News
25-02-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) care: Liam Arthur's mother speaks out
Almost all the plants Michelle Arthur shows me in her garden when we first meet were chosen by her son, Liam: a talented gymnast who won several championships in his teens and loved learning about the natural world."He definitely had green fingers," she tells me, adding that he dreamed of turning the garden into an the garden has become a tribute to her son. Placards bearing his name stand proudly on the lawn, under his favourite hawthorn believes that if he had been referred for specialist inpatient treatment for his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), he would still be here today."The criteria that's set excludes the most vulnerable and disabled patients that are crippled by their OCD."They're the ones that need the help the most but they're the ones that fall through the net," she this story deals with sensitive topics Struggling with grief after the loss of his grandad, Liam dropped out of university and came home, to Sutton in south London, in March started to notice small changes in his behaviour, such as hoovering the house more frequently and rearranging items in the supermarket when they went severity of his symptoms only became clear to her when she once caught him washing his hands with diluted also began to become more secluded, avoiding friends and restricting his eating by going without food for four or five days in repeated cycles."He confessed to me that he felt he was infected and he had to carry out certain rituals and if he didn't carry out the rituals, his family would die or he would die."In September 2018, Liam was assessed and diagnosed with OCD. What is OCD? Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a common mental health condition that affects up to 2% of the UK's population, or about 1,300,000 people.A person with OCD typically has obsessive, intrusive thoughts accompanied by compulsive Amita Jassi, consultant clinical psychologist at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, says there's a misconception that OCD is predominantly about "contamination and cleaning", but it can involve a range of obsessions, such as religious or cultural customs. "When people say 'I'm a little bit OCD', that presses my buttons a bit," Dr Jassi says, adding that the condition is defined as a disorder because "it does have a distressing and interfering quality to it".Dr Jassi stresses that OCD is "very treatable" and the symptoms are not always severe, but exist on a "spectrum", with many patients able to get on with their daily lives even though they may struggle with some tasks. "But, sadly, sometimes it can be really devastating," she says, telling me that lots of the young people under the service's care are housebound as a result of severe worries about contamination or a need to carry out time-consuming rituals. Liam started cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP) - a common treatment for OCD - in July 2021. It is a type of talking therapy that gradually exposes patients to the triggers for their compulsions and tries to help them change the way they react to this helped his condition to improve."I wasn't able to cuddle my son or kiss him because he feared contamination and after one of the sessions I was able to give him a cuddle and it was fantastic," Michelle says. But Liam struggled to engage consistently with treatment. "He slowly went downhill as he found it quite hard," Michelle says, adding that he sometimes missed appointments, because he would be up for most of the night washing his hands and clothes. Because his compulsions included restricting what he ingested, he had difficulties regularly taking his medication as he feared it was rapidly lost weight as he would go without food and water in "repeated cycles", Michelle says. She tried to get Liam referred for specialist inpatient treatment, which was also recommended by his therapist, but was told that he did not meet the criteria for funding from NHS was because he did not meet the guidelines set by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which describe a "stepped care" system, in which someone should be offered more intensive or specialised care after initial treatment is Liam had only completed one trial of CBT with ERP and had only tried one type of SSRI (a type of antidepressant), he was told that he would not be eligible for funding and, even if he was, the waiting list was "significant". In June 2022, Liam had his last therapy session, in which he shared that he had been feeling suicidal - not for the first time."I think the next appointment he failed to keep, because Liam had been up all night washing his hands or showering and they decided to discharge him from the service."Just under a year later, Liam took his own life. A spokesperson for South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust, which was responsible for administering Liam's care, said: "Our thoughts are with Liam's mother, family and loved ones at this very distressing time."We have completed a thorough investigation and will be working closely with the coroner in the lead-up to the inquest. "We remain available to the family as a source of support." London-based charity OCD Action shares Michelle's concerns that people with severe symptoms of the condition are not getting the support they Leigh Wallbank says that for some of the most unwell people with OCD, the quality of care they receive is determined by "potluck" as "there is no consistent model of monitoring".A recent survey by the charity Rethink Mental Illness suggests that this is not just the case with OCD: 35% of respondents in England said they were denied support from mental health services because their condition was considered "too severe".Ms Wallbank argues that changing this is critical, especially as more and more people are approaching her charity for advice on OCD: they have seen a 51% rise in the number of young people contacting their helpline in the last six months, when compared to the same period last year."This is not just an oversight," she says, but proof of the "institutional trivialisation of OCD". "It puts pressure on those providing care and leaves people with OCD without the treatment they need." The BBC wrote to NHS England about Michelle's concerns regarding the criteria for care for response, an NHS spokesperson said "NHS England extends its deepest sympathies to the family of Liam Arthur."Our NHS talking-therapy service supports more than 1.2 million people a year, with the latest figures showing that nine in 10 people can access it within six weeks and, currently, more than two thirds make improvements after treatment – this service offers CBT therapy, which is the treatment recommended by clinical experts for obsessive-compulsive disorder."For those with severe mental illness for which talking therapies are not suitable, since 2019, NHS England has invested a record £1bn into expanding community mental health services and supported 100% of areas to have crisis resolution home treatment teams in place." A coroner's inquest into Liam's death will take place in July and an NHS safeguarding review into his care will also be carried Michelle says that structural change is still needed to ensure that people living with severe OCD get the support they has started a petition calling for the expansion of the only 24-hour inpatient ward in the UK for people struggling with OCD and BDD (body dysmorphic disorder), which at the moment only has 14 beds."I think there's currently about three quarters of a million people living with severe life-impacting OCD, just like Liam," she says."There's a lot of people out there suffering that need help and the help isn't there." If you or someone you know needs more information, help is available on the BBC Action Line
