Let's talk about Plyushkin's syndrome. I'm sure many have heard of people who collect rubbish in their house from all over the neighborhood, turning their home into a real garbage can.
They collect even the most useless things into their house: empty bottles, bottles, broken furniture and other rubbish, eventually cluttering up the apartment to such an extent that it is impossible to pass.
If someone tries to free their home from garbage, "Plyushkin" begin to interfere with this aggressively. Especially from this condition suffer relatives and neighbors who are forced to live in unsanitary conditions.
What is the cause of Plyushkin syndrome?
This phenomenon belongs to psychiatry rather than psychology, so I will describe only my own thoughts on this matter.
Some studies have shown that the disease is often accompanied by organic lesions of the brain as a result of trauma, circulatory disorders, stroke and other organic damage. However, there may be other reasons.
Whatever the reason, one thing is common — a person loses the ability to control their behavior. Normally, different human desires are in balance, constantly critically comprehended. In the case of organic brain damage, a person loses the ability to think critically, as a result of which the main personal trait(in this case-thrift) is not limited to anything.
What is thrift? Thrift is a program of hoarding, one might even say automatism. What happens if you give a command to the machine and do not cancel it? That's right, it will carry out what is written in it until it is disconnected. Now imagine that one of the main automatisms of man was thrift, and then, for some reason, he lost the ability to shape his behavior. It doesn't matter why: dementia, head trauma, alcoholism, stroke or something. The point is that he begins to perform what it was laid down.
If a person the leading character was compassion for living beings, the person, due to brain injury, can start collecting a menagerie of dozens of homeless cats and dogs. Observed an interesting variety of this disorder: breeding large numbers of cows in the village, without any purpose.
There may be some other strange behavior. The main characteristic is the loss of reasonable limits.
In short, the main cause of Plyushkin's syndrome is a violation of higher cognitive functions. In particular, David Tolin revealed that people suffering from this syndrome, greatly reduced the activity of those areas of the brain that are responsible for decision-making.
There may be another reason for the formation of human dependence. Dependence can be formed from anything, not just from psychoactive substances. Although this is also not good, in this case there is hope for a cure. Tomorrow a separate article will be published about addictions.
That to do close?
If you suspect your relative or loved one of something like this, the first thing to do — to examine it. First you need to bring this person to the clinic and record for medical examination. By the way, it should be held regularly to all people. Maybe we should do an MRI. In short, trust the doctors.
It should be understood that a person is sick, and there is no point in indulging his illness. If your loved one is sick with syndrome “Plyushkin", it does not mean that you have to live with him in the trash. Throw away unnecessary things and bend your line. Surely you will have to come for this conflict. We'll have to choose: to indulge the disease, or live in the mud. In the first case, you will have a chance that the person will accept the fact that you are such a bad person who constantly throws away his jewelry.
Most likely no amount of persuasion or logical arguments will not work, and therefore, it makes little sense to bring them. If you do not want to conflict, it is better not to advertise their measures to clean the premises, and just every day to throw stuff. You can resort to various tricks. For example, to say that you have removed the storage room, where you will store these valuable things, and take them to the trash.
One of the most interesting features of mental disorders based on brain damage is that a person does not understand that he is doing something wrong. He just has nothing to understand. For example, if the part of the brain that is responsible for the recognition of geometric shapes is damaged, a person can live as if nothing had happened, confusing his wife's head with a hat, and at the same time assume that everything is in order, and he sees normally. There is even a whole book about it, “the Man who mistook his wife for a hat,” which describes a lot of such cases.
Therefore, if the cause of Plyushkin's syndrome were organic brain damage, a person will be completely confident in his adequacy, because he will not have structures that could assess this adequacy.
The only thing that can be done to relatives in the case of an organic cause is to develop a series of measures for the unnoticed disposal of garbage, or simply not to give this garbage to drag home, going to open conflict.