PhD Student Receives Farnsworth Scholarship to Study Compulsive Hoarding in Older Adults

BUSSW doctoral student Christiana Bratiotis has been awarded the Charles H. Farnsworth Trust Aging Policy Research Fellowship in the amount of $30,000 for pre-dissertation research on "The Community Response to Compulsive Hoarding in Older Adults." The study will be conducted between June 2006 and May 2007.

The substantial risk to health and safety for older adults, their families and the community, together with lengthy, challenging and limited treatment options makes compulsive hoarding a difficult problem for agencies to address. These factors also make compulsive hoarding an important area for research to develop a coordinated and effective agency and community response. Yet, public policies in most communities are punitive rather than intervention focused. The recent formation of several task forces across the country to correct this problem provides a promising avenue to address hoarding on a community and personal level.

No research on the experiences of task forces and their members has yet been conducted. This project will evaluate the effectiveness of multidisciplinary community task forces using three interrelated research components: (1) a key informant interview survey of members of seven American and one Canadian task forces; (2) participant observation of task force meetings for two of these eight community sites (Newton and Northampton, Massachusetts); and (3) an in depth case study of one community, Brookline, Massachusetts, in the early stages of developing interagency coordination for compulsive hoarding.

Reflecting the complexity of compulsive hoarding which spans personal, private, and public domains, the study will capture the perspectives of public and private service providers (mental health, housing, elder services, public health agencies, private family service agencies) and community enforcement organizations (police, fire, legal systems, animal control). This study will help generate specific policy recommendations to address local and state responsiveness for this population of vulnerable elders.