Leslie Midwinter is not the stereotypical image of an extreme hoarder.<\/p>\n
Much of what he collected, he said, had a use to him – books, records and electrical goods, rather than rubbish or piles of old magazines.<\/p>\n
But his inability to get rid of things spiralled out of control, and ultimately left him homeless on Oxfordshire’s streets.<\/p>\n
Now, aged 70, he has been able to manage his hoarding disorder and maintain a healthier lifestyle, thanks to support from mental health charity Response.<\/p>\n
Hoarding disorder was formally classified as a mental health condition by the World Health Organization in 2018. It is estimated that up to four million people in the UK live with it.<\/p>\n
Midwinter’s hoarding began following a period of unemployment after the death of his mother in 1991.<\/p>\n
“I wasn’t the sort of person hoarding bags of rubbish or rotten food or stacks of newspapers. It was all viable, useful commodities I’d collected,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But it got out of control. I was collecting things from skips and wheelie bins on a daily basis.”<\/p>\n
“When I was young I was poor and I couldn’t afford expensive musical equipment. So when that kind of thing was being thrown away, I’d take advantage and get it – like I was making up for it,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I don’t know if I’d say it made me happy exactly. Content, maybe – but not really happy. It kept me occupied, and in some way gave me a sense of achievement.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leslie Midwinter is not the stereotypical image of an extreme hoarder. Much of what he collected, he said,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537445,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":["post-537444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}