Symposium 115 - Advances in Understanding and Treating Hoarding Disorder: Thinking Beyond CBT

Chair(s)

• 

  Kiara Timpano, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Professor
  University of Miami
  Miami, Florida

Discussant(s)

• 

  David Tolin, ABPP, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

  Director
  Anxiety Disorders Center, The Institute of Living
  Hartford, Connecticut

Presenter(s)

• PL

  Persephone Larkin, M.A. (she/her/hers)

  The University of British Columbia
  Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
• 

  Kiara Timpano, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Professor
  University of Miami
  Miami, Florida
• CC

  Chia-Ying Chou, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  San Francisco Center for Compassion Focused Therapies
  San Francisco, California
• 

  Jennifer Krafft, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Assistant Professor
  Mississippi State University
  Starkville, Mississippi
• KK

  Kelly Knowles, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)

  Institute of Living
  Hartford, Connecticut

Hoarding Disorder is defined as the accumulation of and failure to discard a large number of items that are of little use or value, and is marked by debilitating levels of clutter. Current reports indicate that approximately 3-5% of the population may meet criteria for hoarding disorder, and there is a mounting consensus that this phenomenon represents a considerable public health burden. It is associated with significant distress and impairment, and may even pose a threat to the safety and health of an individual and their families. Hoarding disorder has received growing empirical and clinical interest in recent years. While our understanding of risk factors and effective interventions has grown tremendously, there nevertheless is much that remains unknown. Critically, most individuals with hoarding disorder do not experience clinically significant improvement even with gold-standard, evidence-based cognitive-behavioral approaches developed for hoarding, and availability of providers trained to deliver this form of therapy is extremely limited. This symposium will share and discuss recent developments in developing novel treatment approaches for hoarding.

First, Persephone Larkin will highlight recent work on better understanding stigma related to hoarding disorder, with direct consideration of the implications hoarding-related stigma may have for treatment provision. She will discuss findings from an investigation comparing professional hoarding service providers to non-professional community members on attitudes they may hold toward both people with hoarding and interventions for hoarding-related problems.  Dr. Kiara Timpano will share findings from a series of investigations investigating loneliness as a core vulnerability underlying object attachment, including efforts to develop a brief, web-based intervention to target loneliness in hoarding patients. Dr. Kelly Knowles will present data on whether changes in neural activity are associated with cognitive change during a course of cognitive behavioral therapy for hoarding disorder. Dr. Jennifer Krafft will present on a recently developed web-based intervention for hoarding using an acceptance and commitment therapy framework. She will examine theorized processes of change, investigating the impact of proposed mediators and moderators of ACT on hoarding. Dr. Chia-Ying Chou will present recent data examining the effectiveness of group compassion-focused therapy (CFT) for HD, along with the correlations between changes in symptom severity and changes in a number of theoretically relevant hoarding-related vulnerabilities, including hoarding-related beliefs, executive functions, emotion regulation skills, and self-related issues. Finally, commentary will be provided by Dr. David Tolin, one of the foremost experts on hoarding disorder, regarding how these novel findings connect to current needs and developments in improving the well-being of hoarding patients.