Hoarding Among Outpatients Seeking Treatment at a Psychiatric Hospital in Singapore

Abstract

Hoarding symptoms commonly co-occur with other psychiatric disorders, such as major depressive disorder, and have been observed across cultures. Yet, few studies have examined hoarding in other disorders or in an Asian context. The present study aimed to determine: (1) the prevalence of clinically significant hoarding, (2) differences between participants with and without significant hoarding, and (3) predictors of hoarding severity in a Singaporean clinical sample. Five hundred outpatients with anxiety disorders, depressive disorders, schizophrenia, and pathological gambling completed a battery of questionnaires on hoarding, anxiety, depression, functional impairment due to clutter, and quality of life. Thirty percent of our sample reported significant hoarding. However, clutter levels in the hoarding group were low, and hoarding severity was not significantly linked to quality of life, after adjusting for anxiety and depression. In addition, depression - but not anxiety - predicted hoarding severity. Our results provide a cross-cultural perspective on hoarding symptoms, and replicate findings that support a link between depression and hoarding. The differential presentation of hoarding in our sample could be due to true cultural differences in hoarding pathology or to variant psychometric properties of the measures used. Further research evaluating hoarding in Asian contexts with different methodology is needed