MONTREAL - Spring is when many of us get rid of old clothes, furniture and other things that clutter our lives.

For some, though, merely the idea of spring-cleaning can be not only difficult, but paralyzing.

As part of Mental Health Week, Caroline Van Vlaardingen reports on the struggle of hoarders and the lack of resources to help them with their illness.

Gail Adams says her struggle began as a child.

"I've suffered from a hoarding problem for a long time. Pretty much all my life," she said.

"If I lost a possession like if I lost a mitten I really got scolded. And out of that a perfectionism grew around belongings."

But her hoarding took on new life in her early 20s, when she got a job and began compulsively shopping

"If shampoo was on sale I felt I had to buy it even if I had already 20 bottles of it in the cupboard," she said.

"There wasn't really even a path. In the bedroom it was maybe 3 1/2 feet high across the entire bedroom. My bed was not usable. My fridge had stopped working. And my stove had stopped working and my toilet had stopped working."

Unable to cook, she resorted to take out food, and began collecting containers and pizza boxes from fast food restaurants.

"I couldn't throw anything out because I was afraid I would be making a mistake," she said.

It was a crisis that finally forced Adams to face her illness head on. After repeated orders from her landlord to clean up, a radiator in her apartment burst. Gail vacated and returned three days later to find a notice on the door and the locks changed.

"City workers came an in and threw everything out from my apartment," she said.

"To me it really felt like the end of my life."

Soon after, Adams began getting therapy that would change her life.

Like Adams, most hoarders suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, a mental illness that can be treated with cognitive behavior therapy. For hoarders this means learning to change their beliefs about their possessions.

But treatment for hoarding is not cheap or easy to find.

Dr. Kieron O'Connor is one of the only recognized experts in Quebec on treating the problem.

"What distinguishes hoarders from collectors is simple," he said.

"Somebody whose a collector usually collects for positive reasons.... Somebody who hoards it's exactly the opposite. Often they're hoarding something that nobody else values. The main emotion is not pride but anxiety."

Without help, fire hazards like piled-up newspapers are usually what precipitate intervention. And when it comes to homeowners, municipalities are often powerless to intervene.

"Sometimes it only comes to light very unfortunately when the person dies," he said.

That's what happened inside a bungalow in St. Hubert last January, where two elderly people died shortly after ambulance technicians were called to an unheated home filled to the ceilings.

The home was so packed emergency crews get barely get in with a stretcher.

While it's estimated that only one per cent of the population have a hoarding problem, O'Connor believes that number is higher.

"My guess is it's probably between one and four per cent of the population," he said.

"We have support groups now devoted exclusively to hoarders."

Adams has started such a support group. She is no longer in therapy but still working to overcome her hoarding, and she knows it's something she'll have to continue to work at.

For more information on hoarding and how to address the problem call Ami-Quebec at 514-486-1448 or visit www.amiquebec.org.