An extension of a process evaluation to assess the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on individuals with hoarding disorder and the social services.

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has put pressure on both vulnerable populations in our society and the social services´ ability to support these.

However, the specific effects of the pandemic on indivudals with hoarding disorder (HD) and the social services support efforts have not been studied.

In this project, we propose to extend the ongoing process evaluation of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) for indviduals with HD, by adding two surveys adressing issues related to the coronavirus pandemic.

For the first survey, we plan to do adapt the Coronavirus Health and Impact Survey (CRISIS) and send it to potential participants in the RCT and also make it available to individuals with HD in the wider community.

The survey will include questions about the general mental health, hoarding symptoms and treatment preferences (including acceptability of home visits).

For the second survey, we will create novel questions which we will send to social workers (boendestödjare) and managers in the social services.

With this survey, we aim to assess the effects of the pandemic on work tasks and ability to provide support to individuals with HD. Data from the surveys will be analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods.

We will use the results from these surveys to make any adaptations and/or amendments to our projects in order to be able to execute these according to plan and achieve our project aims during the pandemic.

We also expect the results to shed unique light on what effects the pandemic has made on individuals with HD in the community.