A recent report examined a man who takes thousands of pictures weekly and spends hours every day organizing them on his computer is aiming to establish "digital hoarding" as a new subtype of hoarding disorder, according to Live Science. Although he has been diagnosed with tactile hoarding disorder, due to the fact that he also collects physical objects, there is currently no medical diagnosis for hoarding in the virtual realm.
The man's doctors believe his "digital hoarding" is having a negative impact on his life by preventing him from doing other important daily activities such as sleeping, cleaning and going outside of his home.
"He enjoyed taking the photos. However, the processing and saving of the digital pictures caused suffering and distress," said Martine van Bennekom, lead author of the report.
Van Bennekom believes that recognizing "digital hoarding" as a disorder will help doctors diagnose patients better. The DSM-5, which is the reference manual that doctors use to help them identify, diagnose and treat mental disorders, only includes hoarding disorder.
Feeling stress and being impaired by an abundance of something, digital or not, is what leads doctors to classify someone as a hoarder. However, David Tolin, a clinical psychologist and director of the anxiety disorders center at the Connecticut mental health center The Institute of Living, believes that collecting digital data may or may not be a symptom of an actual disorder, according to Capital Wired.
"Lots of people have quirky behaviors, but we don't go around calling those disorders," he said. "If somebody was just hoarding digital objects, but their house was relatively clean, then they may be impaired by their behavior, but they may also just have a quirk about saving digital stuff."
Given the fact that van Bennekom's study only analyzed one subject, further research will need to be done into "digital hoarding" before it is included in the DSM-5.
