Many professionals were stumped because unlike typical obsessive-compulsive disorders, people who exhibit hoarding behaviors don’t respond to standard antidepressant drug treatment. So, a new formal diagnosis was created so that research and treatment methods would be developed for people who forget how to let things go.

What makes hoarders different from the rest of us is the immediate physical danger, pain and suffering they have created for themselves in the present because they have been trying to avoid the pain and suffering of letting go of the past.

For many people, the hoarding behaviors don’t start until later in life. After an aged mother or father dies, the family arrives at the home of the deceased parent only to find that they have to clean out the stock-piled memories of their parent’s lives. And then it’s time to clean out so the home can be sold. For others, the tendency to hoard begins as early as age 12.

For the couple living in the Philadelphia home with the fire, no one knows when the hoarding tendency started. The family member who owned the home was shocked when she saw the property.