Articles from the Week of November 3, 2023
Interesting Quotes
Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something."
Plato
When you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you. I know people who have a lot of money, and they get testimonial dinners and they get hospital wings named after them. But the truth is that nobody in the world loves them. If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.
Warren Buffett
Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
John Wooden
We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes — understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.
Arianna Huffington
“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”
Winston Churchill
I have a theory about the assists we get in life. Only rarely can we repay those people who helped us, but we can pass that help along to others.
Lucille Ball
Fascinating Facts (from InterestingFacts.com unless otherwise noted)
Do you know which mammal is the most common?
Interestingly, it is the bat family. They make up 21% of the mammals alive today. Bats are very diverse, from the tiny bumblebee bat (about 1 inch long) to the flying box bat, with a 5-foot wingspan. Fortunately only 3 species of bats feed on blood and thus are known as vampire bats; they live in Mexico, Central America and South America. They typically feed on blood from livestock and other birds. Vampire bats, despite the mythology about them, are quite social and build strong social relationships with other vampire bats.
Are any continents in all four hemispheres?
Yes, part of Africa is in all four hemispheres—the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere, the western hemisphere and the eastern hemisphere (Source: Needtoknowfacts.com).
Counseling Articles
A Blood Test to Diagnose Bipolar Disorder?
Sometimes people who eventually will be diagnosed with bipolar disorder have a series of depressive episodes first, and because of this will be diagnosed as having unipolar depression and given antidepressants only. The problem with this is that being given antidepressants only without a mood stabilizer can send them into a manic episode and result in quite dangerous behavior. This blood test can now be given, and along with a clinical interview can more accurately clarify whether they have unipolar depression or bipolar disorder.
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Why children of married parents do better, but America is moving the other way
Many contemporary parents are choosing a European model, where they live together and have children, but do not marry. Almost 50% of the children born in 2019 were born to unmarried women. Melissa Kearney, an economist, is looking at the data, not from a biblical perspective, but simply from an economic perspective. Children raised by a single mother are five times as likely to be living in poverty than children raised by married parents. While there are exceptions, children raised by a single parent are less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to graduate from college, and less likely to have higher incomes as adults. This author looks at research and says that children raised in two-parent households are more successful than children raised by a single parent, but that children raised by two parents who are married are even more likely to be successful. As you can imagine, her research and the book she wrote are both being praised by some and vilified by others.
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Consensual Non-Monogamy
Despite the evidence from the above article, the following day NPR ran the following article, which tries to give suggestions for how to have a successful consensual non-monogamous relationship.
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How to Deal With Hypersexuality in Bipolar Disorder
Tanya Hvilivitzky is a person with bipolar disorder and is one of the world’s most respected bloggers about that mental disorder. Hypersexuality is found in more than 50% of persons with bipolar disorder and occurs during both hypomanic and manic episodes. Hypersexuality can lead to reckless and dangerous behaviors and often severely damages relationships. It is especially dangerous during hypomanic episodes because people may not recognize they are in a mood episode and can easily be triggered to engage in hypersexual acts. This is probably the best article I have ever read on hypersexuality in bipolar disorder. If you work with bipolar clients or their family members, I highly recommend you read this article and save it to your computer to use with clients.
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‘Gender-Affirming Care Is Dangerous. I Know Because I Helped Pioneer It.’
This article is written by an adolescent psychiatrist, Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital.
She talks about how the Dutch protocol, the procedure where children and teens with gender dysphoria are treated first with puberty-blocking hormones, then cross-sex hormones, and then with sexual-reassignment therapy, was readily accepted by her European peers, and now by many American doctors. And now, after several years, she says: “Every systematic review of evidence has found the evidence for medical benefits of hormonal interventions for minors to be of low or very low certainty.”
“Medicine, unfortunately, is not immune to dangerous groupthink that results in patient harm.”
Dr. Kaltiala describes how this approach to treating gender dysphoria became quickly accepted in Europe, and why her country is now taking a step back from using this approach. I strongly encourage you to read this article if you work with children, teens or their parents.
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Please Don’t Put Your Suitcase on the Bed, Ever
This article doesn’t have anything to do with counseling, but it makes a good point that probably most of us would never think of.
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Should Psychiatrists Advocate Banning Screens from Kids’ Bedrooms?
A recent meeting of psychiatrists had a debate on whether psychiatrists should ban computer and telephone screens from bedrooms. Here are a sampling of their points.
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In Less Than A Decade, Autism Prevalence Among Adults More Than Doubled
Interesting article. The explanation for this increase is not financial, as the percentage of these people asking for Medicaid assistance during this period actually decreased.
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Zombie Wandering Capitol Hill in Search of Brains Starves To Death
Fun headline from the Babylon Bee.
3 Surprising Reasons Why Girls Watch Porn
Many parents are not concerned about whether their daughters are watching porn, thinking it is only a problem for boys. This compilation of statistics shows that it is important for parents to talk with their daughters about this issue and help them get the information they need in healthier ways.
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Matthew Perry recounted encounter with the ‘presence of God’ in his book before death
Many people are fans of the “Friends” actor Matthew Perry. Here is a fascinating recounting of his moving encounter with God during a time in his life when doctors told his family he only had a 2% chance of surviving.
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People Who Need 988 Find It, but Many Say They Won't Use It Again
The 988 phone line was developed so that anyone having a serious mental health issue, not just those feeling suicidal, could use it. Initial reports were positive, but now that it has been in use a little over a year, among those who have used it, only about 1/3 say they are very likely to use it again.
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Written Exposure Therapy Finds Solid Footing Alongside First-Line Psychotherapies for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
The best-attested therapies for PTSD have been Prolonged Exposure, Cognitive Processing Therapy and EMDR. Those three require extensive training, Prolonged Exposure has a high refusal and dropout rate and require between session practice. This new therapy, Written Exposure Therapy, requires little therapist training, is not as frightening to clients, and does not have between session homework requirements. It seems to have comparable effectiveness to other empirically-substantiated therapies. So if you already do crisis work it seems like you may want to add it to the other treatment options you offer.
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ADHD, Sleep, and Me: It’s Complicated
This person, who has had severe sleep problems since birth, eventually found that he had both ADHD and sleep apnea. While this combination of medical and psychological issues only affects a small percentage of people with ADHD, it would be worthwhile to know if you counsel ADHD clients.
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AI-generated nude images of girls at NJ high school trigger police probe
It was only a matter of time until we saw this headline. One or more male high school students used a readily-available version of AI, and using the headshots of females at the school, created nude, pornographic pictures of several girls at in his class and circulated them among his male classmates.
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“I Wish I Had Known…”
Here are 10 things parents say they wish they had been told when they, or their child was diagnosed with ADHD. Probably you already do some of these things, but this list is a good reminder of all the things it is good to tell adults or older children.
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I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s articles!
Have a nice week or weekend.
Henry Virkler
