When Love Becomes Delusional: Animal Hoarding

Key points

Nearly half of those with high levels of pet attachment exhibit clinical levels of dissociation.

Dissociation is found less in those who hoard objects and is one of the key differences between the two.

Health risks from animal hoarding surpass those from object hoarding, threatening communities.

Last year, I wrote about animal hoarding . In part, this was spurred by an animal hoarder I knew, the daughter of a friend of mine. Her hoarding was not so extreme that the animals suffered. Still, I wondered why it happened and if there was a reason she slipped into hoarding animals rather than objects. A paper by Frost et al. provides some answers. The key differences the authors identified included the following.

Awareness of the Problem

Animal hoarding Source: Grok AI

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