Three horrific stories of animal abuse and neglect surfaced in Maine last week, grabbing headlines and outraging residents across the state.

On April 18, 92 English springer spaniels were found filthy and emaciated at a former kennel in Dover-Foxcroft. Two days later, 12 starving, dehydrated dogs were taken from a Washington County mobile home, and the bodies of 18 others were discovered on the same property. Also that day,more than 70 cats, many wounded or sick, were handed over to a Brunswick animal shelter by a man who finally admitted he was unable to care for them all.

The stories are heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. But while it’s too soon to draw conclusions about the recent Maine cases, some researchers say it’s often not enough to confiscate abusers’ animals, condemn the premises, and sentence people found guilty of animal abuse to fines or jail terms. In some cases, researchers say, “animal hoarding” may be a manifestation of an underlying psychological disorder. Until the condition is understood and treated as the complex problem it is, they say, the pathological collecting and maltreatment of animals will continue.

“Publicly, there’s a real lack of awareness of this issue,” said Christine Fraser, a veterinarian and humane agent with Maine’s animal welfare program, a division of the Department of Agriculture. Nationally, the idea that animal hoarding may be a diagnosable mental disorder instead of a character flaw is gaining some recognition, Fraser said in an interview last week. But so far in Maine, she said, there’s not much support for the idea.

While it may be viewed as eccentric, plenty of people choose to surround themselves with a large number of animals. Many are true animal lovers and perform a valuable service by caring appropriately for lost or abandoned animals, Fraser said.

By contrast, she said, animal hoarders cannot or do not meet the needs of the animals in their care. Like the unfortunate specimens in last week’s headline stories, their animals are often malnourished, dehydrated, dirty and critically in need of medical treatment. Typically oblivious to the sorry condition of their animals, hoarders also may not recognize the deterioration of their own living conditions. Their homes and yards are often filthy – littered with excrement, spoiled food and sometimes the bodies of animals that have died while in their care.

Fraser said hoarders are often paranoid and delusional, living in isolation from their neighbors and communities. They may collect animals to relieve feelings of acute anxiety or because they believe doing so will avert some unspecified disaster. Having their animals forcibly removed by animal welfare workers can be deeply traumatic, Fraser said.

“They’ll tell me they’ve just lost everything that matters to them,” she said. “They’ll say they’re going to kill themselves. It’s scary to leave them like that. These people need to be evaluated [psychologically], but we’re not in a position to order that.”

Despite fines, court orders, jail terms and social condemnation, she said, it’s often just a matter of time before animal hoarders start collecting again.

What’s needed, Fraser argued, is a task-force approach that includes code enforcement, public health, animal welfare and – critically – mental health support for those animal abusers whose behaviors grow out of an underlying psychological problem.

Fraser’s observations are borne out by researchers affiliated with the Hoarding of Animals Research Consortium, an interdisciplinary group loosely headquartered at an online site hosted by Tufts University (http://www.tufts.edu/vet/cfa/hoarding/index.html). The HARC site brings together scholarly articles written on the issue since 1981, along with other information supporting the idea that hoarding behaviors in general, and animal hoarding behaviors in particular, are related to established psychological conditions.

According to Smith College researcher Randy Frost, author of an article published in the April 2000 issue of the journal Psychiatric Times, animal hoarding may be understood as a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Some individuals with OCD feel responsible for preventing some kind of crisis and are compelled to engage in ritualized, repetitive behaviors to avert the disaster. OCD is thought to motivate the hoarding of inanimate objects, and Frost suggests a logical extension to hoarding living creatures.

Schizophrenia, delusional disorders, addiction and anxiety also are mentioned as possible models for understanding animal hoarding. Many of these conditions respond to a combination of drug therapy and counseling, Frost said, suggesting further study for a treatment to prevent animal hoarders from repeating their devastating behaviors.

A spokeswoman for the Maine chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill said Friday that while animal hoarding is considered abnormal behavior, it is still too poorly understood to be in any way protected by an association with mental illness.

“It is not clear in any of these cases that the person is mentally ill,” said NAMI-Maine’s assistant director Carrie Horne. While NAMI advocates for the humane and effective treatment of people with mental illness, she said, the organization “wants to pull away from the image of violence” and not support the possibility of an insanity defense in cases of violence against animals.

Christine Fraser said the reporting of animal hoarders is on the rise, probably as a result of publicity surrounding cases such as those exposed in Maine last week. Most of the cases she’s seen have been in rural areas, but animal hoarders can operate behind closed doors in urban areas as well, she said, citing one case where about 300 guinea pigs were found in inhumane conditions in a Lewiston basement.

Fraser also said that some people prosecuted for animal abuse in other states have relocated to isolated areas of Maine in apparent hope that they can surround themselves with animals without detection.

Rescuing the creatures suffering in those situations is Fraser’s primary concern. But large-scale rescue operations put a huge strain on the animal welfare system, and prosecution rarely results in anything more stringent than a court-ordered prohibition against the abuser ever owning animals again – an order, she said, that’s nearly impossible to enforce.