Genes to blame for clutter compulsion
People who have a compulsive urge to collect and clutter their homes with junk can partly attribute their problem to genes, according to a British study.
Researchers from King’s College London used a twin study to find that genetic predisposition explained a large amount of the risk for compulsive hoarding - a mental health problem in which people have an overwhelming desire to accumulate items normally considered useless, like old newspapers or junk mail.
Of the more than 5,000 twins in the study, roughly 2 per cent showed symptoms of compulsive hoarding and genes appeared to account for half of the variance in risk.
