My brother and mother have obsessive compulsive disorder

How do I get my mother and my 50 year old brother to stop over buying grocery items.  It doesn't matter if its food or household items, but everything for the two of them is bought excessively.  Whatever they buy, it has to be 20-30 of each item.  Their apartment is so overloaded that shopping bags of grocery items line the floors in each room so their is little walking space.   I need to help them but I do not know what to do.  Please advise.  Thank you.

[Ted A Grossbart, Ph.D.]

This sounds like compulsive hoarding.  It is one of the variants of OCD.  It is a tough one.  There are a few specialized programs that will send people out to the home and do a combination of therapy and help to sort and throw things out.  

Saving other  people from themselves is always a challenge if they do not see it as a problem.  The likelihood that they are reinforcing each other's behavior increases the challenge.

Look for an 'opening wedge' where they have trouble with some part of the behavior, the cost, trouble cleaning, whatever.  Without that you have no hope.

Realize that it is probably a way to make a dangerous world feel safer.  Listen carefully for the underlying anxieties and see if you can address them subtly without reference to the hoarding.