Articles from the Week of April 14, 2023
Interesting Quotes
Kindness can transform someone’s dark moment with a blaze of light. You’ll never know how much your caring matters.
Amy Leigh Mercree
Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.
Maya Angelou
Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.
Leo Buscaglia
No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.
Charles Dickens
The happiest people are those who do the most for others. The most miserable are those who do the least.
Booker T. Washington
He that would live in peace and at ease, must not speak all he knows or judge all he sees.
Benjamin Franklin
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it."
ATTICUS FINCH
Counseling Articles
The ADHD Conflict Resolution Guide: Tools and Scripts for Settling Disagreements
Some good ideas for resolving conflicts between parents and teens with ADHD, but probably would be useful for any family that has repeated conflicts with their children.
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Nurse Adopts Teen Mom with Triplets Who Was Parenting Alone
Not a counseling article, but a heartwarming story.
A NICU nurse developed a relationship with a 14-year-old single mother of premature triplets. After the mother and triplets were discharged from the hospital the nurse visited the mother and triplets, found that they were living in a difficult situation and the children were in the process of being removed from the mother and put into the foster care system. She instead talked with the mother and eventually adopted both the teen mom and her three children. A good reminder to us all of the needs in the world around us.
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Anti-Amyloids Linked to Accelerated Brain Atrophy
If you follow any medical magazines you’ve probably seen this headline. It has long been hypothesized that amyloid plaques contribute to or cause Alzheimer’s disease. There’s been some questions about this theory because some people with Alzheimer’s have few plaques and some people with lots of plaques don’t have Alzheimer’s. However some drugs have been created to reduce the buildup of amyloid plaques. This recent study found that these same drugs reduce the amount of brain tissue. The significance of this loss of tissue has not yet been studied, so we don’t yet know the significance of this study.
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Did artificial intelligence write this editor’s note?
Teachers are becoming increasingly concerned about students using artificial intelligence to complete their homework rather than doing it themselves. The editor of Science News found that she could determine whether an answer was written by artificial intelligence rather than an actual student with only 20% accuracy (in other words, she was incorrect 80% of the time). This will definitely be an increasing challenge for high school teachers and college professors now and in the future. There is now an AI site that teachers can use to ask whether the assignment was likely written by artificial intelligence (GPTZero). However, the site can only speculate on the likelihood that the assignment was written by artificial intelligence.
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Overdose Deaths Of Pregnant and New Mothers Increased 81% Between 2017 and 2020
Although many women stop taking medications during pregnancy for fear that it could harm the developing baby, some women who have developed drug dependencies continue to use drugs and may even overdose during pregnancy and following delivery. If you counsel women whom you suspect have a drug dependency you may want to inquire about this issue.
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Marijuana Is Not the Solution for PTSD
In its initial use as a treatment for PTSD marijuana appears to numb individuals, and this causes people to believe that medical marijuana is an effective treatment for PTSD. However, cannabis users find they need to use marijuana more and more frequently during the day in order to get the same relief, and then start to experience some of the side effects of frequent use of marijuana. Several different studies have shown that in the long term, patients with PTSD tend to get worse from long-term use of marijuana.
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Why Adults with ADHD are Particularly Vulnerable to Manipulation
This is a good article explaining why adults with ADHD are particularly vulnerable to manipulation, but I think it could be helpful to anyone who is being manipulated by someone in their environment, whether or not they have ADHD.
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Doctors Expose Just How Experimental ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ Truly Is in Florida Medicaid Case
Drugs or medical treatments, before they can be adopted and approved, are supposed to be demonstrated to be effective and safe. This article describes the medical testimony that was given to the Florida legislature that caused them to decide that the use of puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and sex-change surgery was still an experimental treatment has not been adequately tested before being accepted as a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria.
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17 State Attorneys General Declare Support for Florida Trans Guidance
Regarding the above decision by the Florida legislature, 17 state attorney generals have reviewed the same evidence presented to the Florida legislature and agreed that “gender-affirming treatment” has not been adequately shown to be a safe and effective treatment for gender dysphoria.
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7 Signs That Bipolar Depression Is Brewing
People with bipolar disorder usually have more episodes of depression than of hypomania or mania. Sometimes these episodes seem to come “out of the blue” with little or no warning. However there are several signs that people can look for so they can take steps to prevent or reduce the intensity of bipolar depression. Tanya Hvilivitzky shares what those are.
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New Warnings on All Opioid Pain Medications
New warnings will be issued for all opioid pain medications, including both immediate release and extended release forms of the medication. Those warnings include the fact that overdose risk increases with higher doses of the medications, that opioids should not be used for extended periods of time, and that long-term use can cause hyperalgesis (increased sensitivity to pain) which can prompt patients to ask for higher and higher doses of the medications.
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Have a nice week or weekend!
Henry Virkler