Common Hoarder
Where the person will stockpile an object, or display signs that fit more into obsessive compulsive disorder than being a hoarder. Not being able to pass up a deal, and always taking free items are common traits of a common hoarder. A common hoarder will still have use of their car and home, and lead outwardly normal lives. However in their house there might be rooms where one can barely open the door because it is jammed full of boxes or junk.
Compulsive Hoarding
Compulsive Hoarding is the most familiar form of the disorder, and can arise when common hoarding gets out of hand. It is defined as the acquisition of, and failure to discard, possessions that appear to be of useless or of limited value, with living spaces so cluttered that use of the room as intended is impossible.
Animal Hoarding
A very well-documented type of hoarding, animal hoarding is defined as a pathological accumulation of animals that meets the following characteristics:
- Having more than the typical number of companion animals
- Failing to provide even minimal standards of nutrition, sanitation, shelter, and veterinary care, with this neglect often resulting in illness and death from starvation, spread of infectious disease, and untreated injury or medical condition
- Denial of the inability to provide this minimum care and the impact of that failure on the animals, the household, and human occupants of the dwelling
- Persistence, despite this failure, in accumulating and controlling animals
Animal
hoarding may be the most reported and documented cases of hoarding. Up to a quarter-million animals—250,000
per year—are victims of hoarders.