What was the most shocking part of Kim's childhood and her father's hoarding?

What was the most shocking part of Kim's childhood and her father's hoarding?

The most shocking part of Kim's childhood for me was when they left the final house they lived in before their parents moved into a hotel and found out that a man had been living in their attic. The degree of danger that the family was subject to just because they were unable to access certain parts of the house due to hoarding. The rats and filth were shocking, but what I would expect from hoarding. Having a possibly dangerous man living in your house is a totally different kind of danger.

I agree with Elizabethm. I also think that Kim's father's moodiness and psychiatric condition contributed to her walking on eggshells. When he punched her in the face while her friend was there, I was shocked. I think that the rats, the sludge, the filth, the man in the attic, the maggots and all of it was just one huge horror contributing to her PTSD as an adult.

The man living in the attic was the worst thing, really ridiculous, but I was shocked that they let the papers accumulate to the point where they couldn't use the bathtub or take showers.

I agree that finding that someone had been living in the house unbeknownst to them was shocking but the part that really tore me up was the lack of heat, water to shower, a kitchen to cook in and living with rats and mold and various vermin. That really gave me the old fashion heebee jeebies.

While I agree that all of the above is shocking to me, I think what floors me is how a person's life gets so out of control that any of this can happen!
I cannot handle watching reality shows, so I've never seen the show Hoarders, but as a former newspaper journalist, I've been in hoarders' homes. I think hoarding is an expression of mental illness that one cannot understand until they've lived through it. One hoarder I met many years ago also weighed about 600 pounds, so obviously there were a lot of issues in play there.

I think the story was shocking-but what bothered me the most was the mother never getting her child out of that situation. After the house burned and they moved into the new house, the hoarding started again, I was mad at the mother for not getting her out of that situation Then I realized what the mother was going thru as well.

To me the most shocking thing was the degree to which the filth, mold, and vermin and maggots went so that they were totally unable to meet even their most basic needs, such as eating, drinking, sleeping in safety without rats crawling over them, going to the bathroom, cleaning themselves, that they walked over slippery, dangerous layers of mushy, filthy, sludgy paper.

The most shocking part for me was that they were able to stay under the radar as it were, she mentions the time that social services came and the time that the neighbor threw the dog in the pool but they were able to move from apartment to apartment and find people that would rent to them? Weren't references needed? I

The most shocking part for me was that they were able to stay under the radar as it were, she mentions the time that social services came and the time that the neighbor threw the dog in the pool but they were able to move from apartment to apartment and find people that would rent to them? Weren't references needed? I

Like everyone else it was hard to imagine that anyone would let things get as bad as this couple did. Rats and soggy floors, nowhere to shower, etc. are all disgusting. But the part that was the most shocking was that Kim's father never got any help for his condition, that no one saw what was going on with Kim and helped her out of the situation. There were opportunities that authorities could have caught on to what was going on but no one stepped in to help her.

I agree with the other readers who think that authorities should have stepped in to help Kim and her parents. As a social worker, I think it is abominable that the situation in the house was not noticed by the one social worker that did come.

The new edition of the DSM (DSM-V), the handbook used by mental health professionals, now lists compulsive hoarding as its own disorder, rather than as a subset of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Do you think that this new definition will help professionals recognize and treat the condition more assertively?

I believe that the new DSM will help professionals diagnose and treat hoarding more effectively.

The rats and maggots are the worst to me. The social issues are important, but visualizing the crawling pests gives me chills!

If social workers had intervened without providing treatment for dad would Kim have been better off away from her parents?