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Lookup NU author(s): Kathryn Ragan, Dr Rowan Tinlin- Dixon, Professor Claire Lomax
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s), 2026. Background: The beliefs about their items held by those experiencing hoarding disorder (HD) have been conceptualised as motivating and perpetuating factors. Aims: This paper presents a measure named Beliefs about Items in Hoarding Disorder: designed to identify the presence and strength of beliefs about their items in HD to aid routine assessment and formulation. Method: Participants (n=226) who met the clinical threshold for HD completed a battery of questionnaire items based on previous measures of cognition in hoarding and qualitative research into beliefs held by people with HD about their items, which were subsequently analysed using factor analysis to refine the tool for clinical use. Results: The findings of the analysis indicated three factors: items create emotional attachment and safety, items represent parts of me and my life, and items are useful and should not be wasted. Conclusions: This new measure, Beliefs about Items in Hoarding Disorder, provides an alternative to existing HD measures that do not include all the beliefs deemed important by more recent research and the sample in the current study. This tool has the potential to encourage open conversations with people experiencing HD about their beliefs and how these may be maintaining problems with hoarding. Further work is needed to support the reliability and validity of this measure in clinical practice, but presents an updated and novel tool to assist in developing a more comprehensive understanding of HD.
Author(s): Ragan K, Tinlin-Dixon RM, Lomax CL
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy
Year: 2026
Pages: Epub ahead of print
Online publication date: 15/01/2026
Acceptance date: 06/11/2025
Date deposited: 02/02/2026
ISSN (print): 1352-4658
ISSN (electronic): 1469-1833
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1352465825101227
DOI: 10.1017/S1352465825101227
Data Access Statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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