Researchers from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research say that there is an urgent need to improve interventions aimed at people with “Noah’s Syndrome”, better known as “animal hoarders”.
The warning is made after an international level review of studies was published in the Journal of Mental Health </ em> by the team led by Oscar Ribeiro from CINTESIS/University of Aveiro.
“Animal hoarding is increasing worldwide. Professionals want to support people who have this problem, but face several difficulties, mainly due to the lack of information on effective intervention strategies”, point out the authors.
According to the study, the interventions have been too focused on responding to emergency situations, where degradation is already at extreme levels of neglect. It is no coincidence that these situations are mostly discovered after complaints of bad smell, noise, or danger to public health.
Other problems are the “lack of coordination between the various intervening bodies” and the existence of conflicting priority objectives, namely between animal associations, veterinarians, health and social services, municipalities, and even courts.
In addition, the study points to the “lack of education and training of professionals who deal with this population” and the lack of recognition of the mental health component of this problem.
Without a concerted and long-term approach, the recurrence rate is currently close to 100%. That is, practically all hoarders have or will eventually have a relapse. This is a reality that ultimately frustrates the professionals and the community as emphasized by Sara Guerra, CINTESIS researcher and first author of this study.
Who are these hoarders?
According to the researchers, animal hoarders are people who often live in precarious situations. They are mainly women, elderly, often in conditions of vulnerability and isolation, who tend to hoard only one species of animal (for example, only cats or only dogs).
“These people tend to neglect themselves and animals, who can be hungry, get sick, and even die without proper care. They are often disconnected from the family and have conflicts with neighbors”, the researchers indicate.
The hoarding behavior is recognized as a mental disorder, is specified in the Manual of Diagnostic and Statistical of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-5, APA). The hoarding of animals is “a special manifestation of this clinical condition, which is characterized by the need to retain animals and the difficulty of giving them up”. Most individuals who hoard animals also accumulate inanimate objects.
For the CINTESIS team, it is necessary, first of all, to “treat animal hoarders as the focus of the intervention, considering that these are persons with a mental health problem, and not circumscribing the focus of attention on the hoarded animals”.
The specialists recommend the development of multidisciplinary intervention plans, with well-defined leadership and coordination, the training of professionals and the community, through, for example, awareness campaigns, and the creation of “case managers”.
This investigation will continue. “We intend, in a next phase, to listen to entities and professionals to understand which strategies and interventions are currently used, with the objective of proceeding with a national systematization and, later, the creation of general intervention guidelines”, they conclude.