Mental Health and Hoarding

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham Erdington) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate on a subject that, to the best of my knowledge, has never been discussed on the Floor of the House before.

I often speak of my 25 years as an NHS nurse because that experience has fundamentally shaped my understanding of the hidden struggles within our communities, and it is from that perspective that I raise the urgent and often misunderstood issue of hoarding disorder. Many years ago, as a district nurse serving the Kingstanding community—the same community that I am now proud to represent in Parliament—I entered homes where extreme clutter was not an anomaly but a visible sign of a deep, unaddressed need. Today, we have a name for it. In 2018, hoarding disorder was formally recognised in Britain as a distinct mental health condition. It is defined by persistent difficulty in discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of value, leading to cluttered living spaces and significant distress or impairment in daily life.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend speaks very effectively about hoarding disorder. As she has explained, it is a mental health condition in its own right, although it is often confused with obsessive-compulsive disorder. One of my constituents spoke to me about her husband, who has completely filled the living room with items that he just cannot discard. Does my hon. Friend agree that whether it is related to OCD or to another condition, hoarding not only disrupts the lives of the individual who goes through the anxiety and trauma of the condition, but affects others around that individual?

During Prime Minister’s questions this morning, we heard that one in four of us will suffer from a mental health condition. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to increase mental health support to make it easily accessible and enable it to provide effective treatment, and that such earlier intervention can avoid the deterioration of the condition?

[Paulette Hamilton]

My hon. Friend raises a valuable point. I will come on to that later in my speech, but I absolutely agree that hoarding disrupts people’s lives.