Edna Jones was your typical elderly woman living in Fort Worth Texas in the 1970s. At least that’s how she seemed to the people in her neighborhood. You may have known this hoarder as the weird old lady down Magnolia Ave that lived in a house you couldn’t see from the street because of all the newspapers, garbage, broken down furniture, and plastic bags filled with who-knows what. But what you didn’t know about Edna Jones is what was really going on inside her home and even more importantly, what you didn’t know is that whatever was going on inside her head was much more serious than you could understand. In Edna’s time, there was not enough known about hoarding to categorize it as a real disorder.
She had been hoarding for as long as she could remember. What started as keeping a couple old keepsakes soon turned into rooms full of junk that made Edna feel safe but also stressed and incredibly depressed. Even though she knew something was wrong, she didn’t know what it was. Mental health was not very well known or talked about in the United States in the 1970s. The fact that Edna was cramming her home with unnecessary items was not recognized as a feeling of deep sadness. By the time she realized that she had a problem, she felt so embarrassed about what she had been doing for years that she quit trying to get help.
Is Hoarding a mental health disorder?
Hoarding wasn’t recognized as a separate disorder until the late 1990s. In the 1970s, psychiatrists and therapists treated patients with hoarding tendencies under the classifications of OCD or anxiety. When Edna asked her family doctor for help, nobody suggested that her packrat habits could be attributed to an underlying mental illness.
Edna was a Hoarder in Fort Worth and nobody helped her
Fort Worth Texas in the 1970s was full of friendly southern people. When word got out about Edna and her mountains of magazines and towels, people didn’t worry she would need help. They ridiculed her from afar and made guests avoid traveling past her driveway. Having too much stuff in your home wasn’t recognized by the people in Fort Worth as an illness that needed to be treated with kindness and care. They saw madness.
Nobody in the 1970s knew how to react to hoarders. Being a hoarder was taboo. Neighbors gossiped about her, family shunned her, and even code enforcement gave her sticky notes threatening fines if she didn’t clean her yard. So Edna did what felt natural and kept everything to herself. She hid her shame.
Therapists for a Hoarder
Flash forward to the 1990s and even the 2000s and you will find that Fort Worth and Texas as a whole are far more equipped to handle hoarding and hoarders. Hoarding was recognized as a distinct disorder in 2013 with the publishing of DSM-5. There are even hoarding therapists in Fort Worth that will go into your home with compassion and help you on your journey to recovery. If Edna lived in Fort Worth today she would have been offered treatment instead of ridicule.
In the 1970s, most hoarders weren’t even recognized as hoarders. The problem had to get so bad that someone knocked on your door notifying you of a death in your home before anyone did anything about it. Edna Mae didn’t realize she was a hoarder until her kitchen caught fire because she couldn’t walk through her own kitchen to grab a cup of water. By that time, it was too late. Firefighters came and cleaned everything up. No social worker asked if she needed help. There were no support groups and certainly wasn’t a movie staring Cameron Diaz telling the world hoarding was an actual problem. That isn’t to say Fort Worth hasn’t made improvements. We have.
Edna Jones is just one of many victims who suffered during a time where no one really understood mental health. What Edna stuffed into her home were tears she couldn’t cry. If you or someone you love is suffering from Hoarding Disorder, Fort Worth can help you. Call us today.