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Jewish World Review Feb. 7, 2001 / 14 Shevat, 5761

Kevin McDermott

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Consumer Reports


Society's newest sufferers: 'Cat ladies'

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- SPRINGFIELD, Ill. | People who habitually hoard more pets than they can handle aren't just eccentric scofflaws, psychiatrists say. They often have a little understood mental disorder.

Illinois soon may be the first state in the nation to treat them that way.

New legislation announced Monday would allow Illinois judges to order psychiatric evaluation of people implicated in multiple-animal neglect cases.

Ultimately, the psychiatric evaluations could be used to limit future animal ownership by such people. Current law allows officials to take custody of neglected or abused animals but generally doesn't address the fact that most animal hoarders will quickly re-establish their in-home zoos.

"It's obvious that it's unsafe for the animals," said state Rep. Tom Dart, D-Chicago. "And when one of these hoarding incidents occurs, (animal shelters) are overwhelmed."

In addition to the psychiatric evaluations, Dart's bill would force defendants to help pay local shelters for the cost of caring for the animals.

Ledy VanKavage of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which supports Dart's bill, said the shelters "totally shut down. You have animals giving birth in the hallways ... (and) under desks. It's total chaos."

In Illinois last year, there were more than a dozen such cases that state officials were aware of, involving about 2,400 animals.

Psychiatrists in recent years have concluded that people whose lives are overrun by pets often are suffering from a obsessive-compulsive disorder. It is believed to be an extreme version of more common hoarding compulsions found among collectors of inanimate objects, or people who can't bring themselves to throw anything away.

According to a paper in the April 2000 issue of Psychiatric Times, animal hoarders frequently have had traumatic childhoods in which "animals served as stable fixtures in otherwise chaotic homes." They usually believe they are saving the animals, and sometimes they cannot tell when a pet is starving or dead.

The article estimates there are 700 to 2,000 new hoarding cases in the United States annually.

It also says that in nearly 60 percent of cases studied, the hoarders wouldn't acknowledge the clear presence of dead or sick animals; one-quarter of the hoarders' beds were soiled with animal feces or urine; and 60 percent of the hoarders were repeat offenders.

"I think the courts have to recognize this as a mental health problem and not purely a criminal problem," said the article's author, Randy O. Frost, professor of psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Mass.

He said the proposed Illinois law sounds like "a reasonable approach," but he warned: "The mental health community still doesn't know enough about this problem" to offer effective treatment.

Kevin McDermott is a writer with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Comment by clicking here.

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