Sociodemographic, income, and environmental characteristics of individuals displaying animal and object hoarding behavior in a major city in South Brazil: A cross-sectional study

Vet World Vol.14 December-2021 Article-6

Research Article

Veterinary World, 14(12): 3111-3118

https://doi.org/10.14202/vetworld.2021.3111-3118

Graziela Ribeiro da Cunha¹, Camila Marinelli Martins^2,3, Maysa Pellizzaro⁴, Christina Pettan-Brewer^5,6, and Alexander Welker Biondo⁷

1. Department of Health Science, School of Veterinary Medicine, Positivo University, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
2. Department of Nursing and Public Health, Ponta Grossa State University, Ponta Grossa, Paraná, Brazil.
3. AAC&T Research Consulting, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
4. Department of Post-Graduate Program in Collective Health, Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.
5. Department of Comparative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA.
6. One Health Brasil Association, Brazil.
7. Department of Veterinary Medicine, Federal University of Paraná State, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.

Background and Aim: Hoarding cases have not been researched in depth in developing countries, such as Brazil. This study aimed to describe the characteristics of people with hoarding behavior in Curitiba, Brazil.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted based on complaints about hoarding situations received by the City Hall. The data on sociodemographic, income, and environmental characteristics of individuals displaying animal and object hoarding behavior were obtained and analyzed using descriptive statistics and multiple correspondence analyses.

Results: Out of the 113 hoarding cases reported, 69 (61.06%) were fully assessed. Most of the participants (43; 62.32%) were women, and it was observed that most of the animal hoarding cases were women (p=0.02). The average age was 62.47 years old, and most of them (44; 63.76%) had studied up to the middle school level. People associated with object hoarding belonged to the lower income category (p=0.031). In most cases, the homes had an unpleasant odor (45; 65.21%), and this was prevalent in cases involving women (p=0.004) and animals (p=0.001). The risk of fire (24 [34.78%]) and landslip (9 [13.04%]) was more frequent in the case of object hoarding (p=0.018 and 0.021, respectively).

Conclusion: The description of characteristics of individuals with hoarding behavior may assist in understanding the magnitude of this public health problem in Brazil and shed light on the need to develop studies on the health conditions of people and animals that live in these situations. Keywords: epidemiology, hoarding, population characteristics.

Keywords: epidemiology, hoarding, population characteristics.

How to cite this article: Cunha GR, Martins CM, Pellizzaro M, Pettan-Brewer C, Biondo AW (2021) Sociodemographic, income, and environmental characteristics of individuals displaying animal and object hoarding behavior in a major city in South Brazil: A cross-sectional study, Veterinary World, 14(12): 3111-3118.

Received: 28-07-2021 Accepted: 03-11-2021 Published online: 14-12-2021

Corresponding author: Alexander Welker Biondo E-mail: abiondo@ufpr.br

DOI: 10.14202/vetworld.2021.3111-3118

Copyright: Cunha, et al. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http:// creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.