| Randy O. Frost, Ph.D. All links on this page are external except Chapter 23 |
| Dr. Randy Frost, the Israel Professor of Psychology at Smith College, has authored over 100 scientific articles and book chapters mostly concerning perfectionism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and hoarding. He is a registered expert on Compulsive Hoarding. |
Dr. Frost holds two NIMH-funded grants jointly with Gail
Steketee, Ph.D. and David O. Tolin, Ph.D., to study compulsive
hoarding, and is a member of the Hoarding of Animals
Research Consortium (HARC) and New England Hoarding
Consortium.
He has consulted with numerous communities in setting up
and running task forces on the problem of hoarding, including
New York City, Ottawa, Canada, and Northampton,
Massachusetts.
His work has been featured on news programs such as 20/20,
Dateline, Good Morning America, and NPR. In1993, he
published the first systematic study of compulsive hoarding.
His Website
(where you will find his research articles on Hoarding listed)
Obsessive Compulsive Foundation
Hoarding Website (co-editor)
Chapter 23
His books on Compulsive Hoarding:
Buried in Treasures
Workbook
Review
Treatments That Work, Compulsive Hoarding and Acquiring,
Therapists Guide
New England Hoarding Consortium
Spring 2006 Newsletter
Spring 2007 Newsletter
Article
Learning to Let Go
A Call To Collect
Article
Clutter Gone Wild
(which discusses when and how he started researching
Hoarding).
Transcript of speaking at NYC Hoarding Task Force, 1/94
Audio
Hoarding and Clutter By The Infinite Mind
This audio program from the non-profit radio show, The
Infinite Mind looks at hoarding, which involves the
accumulation of, and inability to throw away, unneeded
possessions - to the point that a home may become so filled
with stuff that furniture and rooms can no longer be used for
their intended purposes.
Guests include Dr. Randy Frost, a pioneer researcher in the
study of clinical hoarding, and Dr. Sanjaya Saxena, a
neurobiologist who is pinpointing where in the brain the
problem seems to originate. Author Denise Linn, addresses
non-clinical forms of hoarding with tips on how to recognize -
and get rid of - clutter.
Click here to order the audio for downloading
FACE YOUR HOARDING TENDENCIES Teleclass
February 19, 2007
An edited version of the complete teleclass with Dr. Randy
Frostand Sandra Felton (Founder, Messies Anonymous) on CD.
Quote about Motivation and Discrepency
Dr. Randy Frost speaking during Face Your Hoarding
Tendencies teleclass, March 8, 2007
Minutes 24:35 & 26:16 of recorded discussion:
"Regarding motivation, there are a couple of things that I think it’
s important for people to think about. And that is in order for
change to happen in anyone’s life, two things have to happen.
One is the change has to be important. Now what I mean by
important is that there has to be a discrepancy or a difference
between the way the person is living now and the way they want
to live. There’s got to be some discrepancy there.
So the person’s unhappy with the way they are now. The idea is
that if you haven’t reached your goal, but if you’re reasonably
comfortable and there’s not much difference, then change is
unlikely. There’s got to be a big enough discrepancy between
where you’re at now and where you want to be in order for that
change to be important.
But beyond that, the second thing we have to have is some
confidence that change is possible. If there’s a discrepancy
between the way I live now and the way I want to live but I don’t
have any confidence that I can actually make a change, then
what’s going to happen is I’m going to engage in some funny
ways of thinking in order to reduce that discrepancy. I’m going to
start telling myself, ;
“Well it’s not so bad the way it is now.” Or, I’m going to tell
myself “that maybe I like it this way.” Or I’m going to tell myself
“it’s not my problem, it’s someone else’s problem. Because I
have this discrepancy and I have to reduce it in order to feel
comfortable. And I can’t reduce it by changing because I’m not
confident that I can do it. So I use some mental trickery and that
leads me to appear as though I don’t recognize that I have a
problem.”
Current Research Projects
Treatment of Compulsive Hoarding
NIMH (R21 MH068539-01) / 2003-2006 (Co-Investigator)
Compulsive hoarding has proven refractory to both medication
and psychosocial treatments usually effective for obsessive
compulsive disorder. This project focuses on developing and
testing an ecologically valid psychosocial treatment based on
identified psychopathology features and a cognitive-
behavioral model of this complex syndrome.
The specific aims of this proposed 2-site project are to:
Revise and expand a cognitive-behavioral treatment manual
for compulsive hoarding that has been used previously with
moderate success to treat people with this syndrome.
Specifically, we will:
Complete the revision of the existing treatment manual,
including additional sections on motivational enhancement
and on relapse prevention;
Treat a small sample of clients with compulsive hoarding and
make appropriate modifications preparatory for a subsequent
trial.
Test the CBT treatment in a randomized trial on a larger
sample of 40 clients with primary complaints of compulsive
hoarding in a 2-site project (20 clients per site). For this
purpose we will:
Conduct full-scale assessments in the clinic and in clients’
homes at pretest, posttest and follow-ups;
Conduct monthly assessments during treatment to study
process aspects of the CBT;
Determine effect size of active treatment by comparing
outcomes for CBT with outcomes for the waitlist control
condition;
Conduct preliminary analyses of potential predictors of
outcome on the combined treated samples if statistically
appropriate.
Psychopathology of Compulsive Hoarding
NIMH (R01 MH068008-01), 2004-2008 (Principal
Investigator)
This two-site project aims to examine the psychopathology of
a common and problematic syndrome, compulsive hoarding.
Three studies are proposed to examine core features of
hoarding in relationship to OCD and community controls, to
test portions of a cognitive behavioral model of hoarding, and
to study behavioral aspects of discarding and acquiring in
natural settings. All studies will be conducted simultaneously
using identical procedures in two sites (Boston,
Hartford/Smith) over a period of 4 years.
Dr. Gail Steketee will serve as the PI for the Boston University
site where research activities will take place at the Center for
Anxiety and Related Disorders, directed by Co-Investigator Dr.
Tim Brown. Dr. Randy Frost of Smith College will serve as PI
for studies that will take place at the Institute of Living,
Hartford Hospital subcontract site where Co-Investigator Dr.
David Tolin directs the Anxiety Disorders Center.
The timetable includes a 4-month start-up phase to hire and
train staff, recruit participants and finalize measures and
procedures. Study 1 on phenomenological and explanatory
features begins immediately thereafter. Studies 2 and 3 test
hypotheses about emotion, beliefs and behavior derived from
a model of compulsive hoarding behavior and begin later in
Year 1 after procedures have been piloted. All studies run
concurrently through month 6 of Year 4, when data reduction
and analyses will subsequently begin.
The acquisition and failure to discard possessions that appear to be useless or of limited value. This describes the behavior that many of us engage in. It is not really a problem, maybe an eccentricity, unless we see the other two features of the definition: Living spaces so cluttered that using the room as intended is impossible. The third defining feature is significant distress or impairment in the ability to function. People experience distress at the possibility of throwing things away, and at the Herculean effort it would take to clean up the house. They develop avoidance to decision-making and discarding. They avoid putting things out of sight. We think hoarding behavior is in large part an avoidance behavior. -Randy O. Frost. Ph.D., Speaking to the New York City Hoarding Task Force, 94. |
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