Abstract
Hoarding behavior is prevalent in children and adolescents, yet clinicians do not routinely inquire about it and youth may not spontaneously report it due to stigma. It is unknown whether hoarding behavior, over and above obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS), is associated with major clinical factors in a general youth population. This observational study included N = 7054 youth who were not seeking help for mental health problems (ages 11–21, 54% female) and completed a structured interview that included evaluation of hoarding behavior and OCS, as a part of the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort between November 2009 and December 2011. We employed regression models with hoarding behavior and OCS (any/none) as independent variables, and continuous (linear regression) or binary (logistic regression) mental health measures as dependent variables. All models covaried for age, sex, race, and socioeconomic status. A total of 374 participants endorsed HB (5.3%), most of which reported additional OCS (n = 317). When accounting for OCS presence, hoarding behavior was associated with greater dimensional psychopathology burden (i.e., higher P-factor) (β = 0.19, p <.001), and with poorer functioning (i.e., lower score on the child global assessment scale) (β = − 0.07, p <.001). The results were consistent when modeling psychopathology using binary variables. The results remained significant in sensitivity analyses accounting for count of endorsed OCS and excluding participants who met criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 210). These results suggest that hoarding behavior among youth is associated with poorer mental health and functioning, independent of OCS. Brief hoarding-behavior assessments in clinical settings may prove useful given hoarding behavior’s stigma and detrimental health associations.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1955-1962 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry |
| Volume | 33 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| Early online date | 20 Sep 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2024 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2023.
Funding
This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) No. K23MH120437 (RB) and R01MH119219 (REG), the Dowshen Neuroscience fund, and the Lifespan Brain Institute of CHOP and Penn Medicine. OL is supported by the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology. Data used in this article were obtained from the Philadelphia Neurodevelopmental Cohort (PNC), held in National Institute of Health (NIMH) database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP). This study is a collaboration between Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and University of Pennsylvania, in which a population-based sample of 9,458 youth between ages 8–21 completed multimodal assessments. The PNC was supported by the NIMH under award numbers MH089983 and MH089924. Additional funding sources included the Dowshen Program for Neuroscience; and the Marc Rapport Family Investigator grant through the Brain and Behavior Foundation. The content reflects the views of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the NIMH, PNC investigators, or of any of the other sponsors.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Dowshen Neuroscience fund | |
| Dowshen Program for Neuroscience | |
| Lifespan Brain Institute of CHOP | |
| National Institute of Mental Health | MH089924, K23MH120437, R01MH119219, MH089983 |
| Brain and Behavior Research Foundation | |
| University of Pennsylvania Health System | |
| Ministry of science and technology, Israel |
Keywords
- Child psychiatry
- Hoarding
- Obsessive–compulsive symptoms
- P-factor
