More than 1m Aussies are hoarders - forum

Compulsive hoarders often live in squalor and risk disease, injury, fires and homelessness, and their over-attachment to things can compromise their relationships, clinical psychologist Dr Christopher Mogan says.

To throw something away is to throw away part of themselves ... its a very pervasive disease that's hard for the non-hoarder to grasp," he told a conference in Sydney.

The two-day forum, dubbed Pathways Through the Maze National Hoarding and Squalor conference, attracted 135 experts from Australia, the UK and the US..."  More