Session: SPECIAL SESSION: Studying Hoarding and Mental Health: Trying to Keep Up with a Freight Train (Research that Promotes Sustainability and (re)Builds Strengths (January 15 - 18, 2009))

Compulsive hoarding is a relatively new topic of study in health and human services and currently has the singular disadvantage of being a behavioral and mental health problem without clear diagnostic criteria, although this may change with DSM V. Studying this problem has been difficult and sometimes backward, a not uncommon problem in research, as our theoretical models that inform interventions are inadequately tested while those in dire need of help cannot wait. Hoarding, in particular, challenges researchers on multiple fronts as so many disciplines and human service agencies are engaged in coping with and resolving its myriad and sometimes crippling effects.