Hoarding Older Adults

Research has shown that hoarding disorder (HD) is debilitating chronic and progressive condition that has significant public health implications. Older adults represent the largest group of HD suffers due to increasing severity with age. Often, Veterans with HD are seen in the VA system and the status of their hoarding is never assessed. Providers are treating patients for other health and social service issues yet missing an important source of disability and distress. This insidious, often undetected condition leads to greater medical and social disability and is costly to the VA system as patients continue to decompensate. When HD is even detected, patients in the VA receive indefinite case management and inadequate treatment. The cases the investigators know about have caused significant financial burden to the investigators' system. Most importantly, HD causes significant impairment and poor quality of life for the Veterans, particularly older Veterans. Unfortunately, the investigators know nothing about how to treat late life HD. Nor do the investigators know how neurocognitive features impact treatment response, which the investigators strongly suspect influence treatment outcome. HD is a potentially treatable source of disability in the VA system - one that the VA must research and treat. This study represents the first randomized controlled trial of a novel intervention for the treatment of HD in older Veterans. The main objective of this proposal is to further refine and test a new treatment for hoarding in older Veterans (age 60-85) which will be accomplished through a series of treatment development phases (case series, open labeled trial) and a randomized controlled trial. The new treatment (Cognitive Remediation and Exposure Therapy for hoarding; CogRET) is hypothesis driven and based on late life anxiety literature, consultation with mentors, results of the pilot study using a standard cognitive-behavioral intervention, and several case series that will be completed prior to the start of the Career Development Award (CDA). The first draft of CogRET is complete and is currently being used with several case studies. The research and training plan is divided into 5 phases; 1) training and preparation 2) training, further case studies using CogRET, further modification of CogRET 3)training, open label trial of CogRET, further modification of CogRET 4) randomized controlled trial and 5) presenting, publishing, dissemination of results and submission of a VA Merit grant. Primary hypotheses include 1) when randomized to CogRET, older Veterans with HD will show significant decreases in acquisition, difficulty discarding, and excessive clutter compared to those randomized to case management and 2) executive functioning (EF) is a significant moderator of treatment response. Other mediators and moderates of treatment response (psychiatric, medical, demographic, etc.) will be explored.