F lived alone, and there had been accumulation of “waste” congesting and cluttering the living area. F’s son shared his concerns with the primary team about his father’s hoarding garbage, spoiled food, and excreta at home since the cancer diagnosis. He was admitted to the oncology floor for evaluation and management of his symptoms. He had been started on carboplatin chemotherapy infusion 1 month prior. He was brought into the hospital for concerns with regard to worsening dysphagia, fatigue, and serosanguinous drainage from his nose. F” is a 78-year-old widowed, Caucasian man with a past medical history of hypertension and coronary artery disease who was diagnosed with carcinoma of the paranasal sinus with leptomingeal carcinomatosis 6 weeks prior. The present case report is of a patient with sudden-onset hoarding of garbage, spoiled food, and excreta in his house after a life-threatening diagnosis. Both these descriptors refer to a person’s home becoming so unclean, unhygienic, and repulsive that individuals of similar culture and background would consider extensive clearing and cleaning to be essential ( 4, 5). In the present case report, Diogenes syndrome and severe domestic squalor are used interchangeably to describe the same psychopathological phenomenon. There has been a proposal for use of the term “severe domestic squalor” as a better descriptor of this syndrome ( 4). However, many authors have argued that there was not much discussion of why the eponym is appropriate and have argued that the term is a misnomer ( 4– 6). The syndrome was named after Diogenes, as the ancient Greek philosopher showed “lack of shame” and “contempt for social organization” ( 3). The term Diogenes syndrome was later coined by Clark et al. Macmillan and Shaw first described the syndrome in 1966 ( 2). A depiction of Diogenes, by French painter Jean-Leon Gerome ( 1), is shown in Figure 1. The onset of extreme self-neglect in elderly individuals where there is a temporal relationship to the news of a life-threatening illness has been reported in literature and referred to as Diogenes syndrome, named after the ancient Greek philosopher who lived in a barrel in the 4th-century BCE.
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