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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