A deceased Glastonbury woman – who had been living under hoarding conditions – was excavated from underneath piles of debris in her house, according to a June police report. Officers responded to Mary Notarangelo’s home for a wellness check and her remains were found months later, buried under the debris.
“Oh God,” an officer can be heard saying as police walked over piles of garbage nearly six feet high. Body cameras captured empty bottles, milk cans, cardboard boxes, utensils, clothes and even used diapers and accumulated feces.
Notarangelo was a former police detective in Bridgeport and left the department after an injury to her back and legs in an on-duty car crash, the Associated Press reported.
‘A very common psychiatric condition’
Widely-cited data on hoarding disorder shows that 2.5% of people across the U.S. live with the mental health condition.
“When you compare that to the population of the U.S., that's roughly the population of the state of Virginia. So this is a very common psychiatric condition,” said Dr. David Tolin, founder and director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at The Institute of Living – part of Hartford HealthCare.
Any number of factors can trigger hoarding disorder – from economic scarcity to genetics, he said.
“Some people start hoarding after a stressor of some kind, a death, a loss, something like that, but other people start to hoard in a more insidious fashion. It creeps up on them over a period of years, and there's no obvious trigger,” he said.
Notarangelo declined to discuss her hoarding behavior, according to the Associated Press, which interviewed her former colleague.
Tolin said many people with hoarding disorder recognize that there is a problem and seek help, but many others “either don't recognize that there's a problem or they're defensive about it, and they're kind of in denial, and so they often resist efforts to intervene.”
“A lot of people end up being in these very contentious relationships with their families, with their neighbors, with their towns, because they don't see it the way that everybody else does,” he said.
Stigma also affects people from seeking treatment, studies show.
Social media responses to Notarangelo’s living conditions and death at the age of 73 have been largely empathetic, with people recognizing hoarding disorder as a health condition.
“Really sad story. It is definitely an isolating disease. Harrowing to think that it's likely the stuff fell on her and trapped her. What a horrible way to go,” one Reddit user wrote.
Seeking help
The non-profit Clutterers Anonymous offers online and in-person meet ups, and lists a 12-step process to manage clutter.
But hoarding disorder, a more severe condition, can lead to severe reductions in quality of life, Tolin said.
“People with hoarding disorder very often have homes that they can't use for their intended purpose, but they also often find that it's very difficult for them to function in other aspects, such as work or school,” he said.
But treatment options are available, he said.
“The one thing that we do have evidence for of its efficacy is what's called Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is a kind of counseling that involves encouraging people to look at things from a different angle and to try new behavioral patterns,” Tolin said.
Dr. Neha Jain, a geriatric psychiatrist and director of the Mood and Anxiety Clinic at UConn Health, said her older patients can struggle with downsizing.
“For a lot of them, belongings are the only connection with their family [member] who is no more,” she said. “Hoarding is often the subtype of obsessive compulsive disorder [OCD], so for older adults going through life transitions – like loss of a spouse, a child leaving home, isolation – existing anxiety could be amplified. Treating the underlying OCD and anxiety can be helpful,” she said.
Connecticut Public’s Tyler Russell and the Associated Press contributed to this story.
