Articles from the Week of February 9, 2024

Interesting Quotes

“Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna - or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out.”

BARBARA WALTERS

Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”

Mary Anne Radmacher

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Eleanor Roosevelt

''Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, but beautiful old people are works of art.''

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

Peter Drucker

"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER

Fascinating Facts

Superbowl facts

The average price of a 2024 Super Bowl ticket is $12,240 in case anyone is interested in going.

Or if you’d like to advertise your practice there, the average cost for a 30-second ad is $7 million.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was never straight to begin with.

The Tower was built on sandy soil, which started to shift by the time the fourth floor was being constructed in 1173. (Source: HistoryFacts.com)

Arachibutyrophobia is the fear of getting peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth (Source: NeedtoKnowFacts.com)

Victor Lustig, considered one of the world’s best con artists “sold” the Eiffel Tower for scrap metal — twice. (Source: HistoryFacts.com)

Counseling Articles

5 SIGNS OF ROMANCE SCAMS

This article has one section on Romance Scams, followed by a second article on Financial Scams and a third article on how Artificial Intelligence is being used in scams. If you are a little too trusting or have one or more clients that you think might be vulnerable to one of these scams you might want to tell them about this article, since it has some good information.

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First functional human brain tissue produced through 3D printing

We talked last week about Neuralink, and that it almost sounded like science fiction. This week we have another discovery that sounds like something else from science fiction even though its actually reality. We’ve been hearing in the last few years that more and more things are being printed with 3D printers. This week researchers reported that they have been able to print functioning brain tissue with these printers. If you care to read this brief article, it also contains hypertext links to three related articles.

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He Hunts Sloppy Scientists. He’s Finding Lots of Prey.

This is an article about Sholto David, who has a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology. It’s in the New York Times, so you probably won’t be able to access it unless you have a subscription to that newspaper. But Dr. David is a recent graduate who has been finding errors in several research papers, causing several to be retracted. His work has caused six articles published in Harvard’s highly respected Dana Farber Institute to be retracted and some 30 other authors to issue corrections to their articles. His work is continuing, and probably will have implications for the review process in scientific journals to be examined and some changes eventually to be made.

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Are you catastrophizing? Here’s how to stop assuming the worst.

If you are starting to work with a client who catastrophizes occasionally or regularly, this is a good introductory article explaining catastrophizing and giving some suggestions from counselors, social workers and psychologists about how to recognize and help clients start to change that mental habit.

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Study Claims Merit-Based Hiring Practices Are Unfair

“Merit-based hiring is when an employer hires a candidate solely on their resume, achievements including higher education, and their past career advancement.” Researchers conducted five experiments and published their results in an APA journal in which they concluded that hiring practices based exclusively on merit were less fair to minorities than practices that included consideration of the minority status of applicants.

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As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do.

This article is in the New York Times, so you also won’t be able to read it if you don’t have a subscription to that newspaper. This is an in-depth look at the present state of “gender-affirming treatment” here in the U.S. It discusses the growing number of people who were told that changing their gender would solve all their emotional problems, only to discover it did not. It also covers the growing number of doctors, counselors, and psychologists who do not agree with fast-tracking every teen who claims to have gender dysphoria (often self-diagnosed after listening to influencers on TikTok and other social media platforms). Even though the leaders of professional groups such as the two APAs or some pediatricians group still believe that gender-affirming treatments are the way to proceed for troubled adolescents (and often will not let a discussion of alternative views be on the Agenda of their national professional meetings), a growing number of professionals in each of these groups believe other co-occurring mental issues should be treated first, and then see whether the “gender dysphoria” is still present. In 80% or more cases, the gender issues resolve sometime during puberty without changing ones gender.

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Transgender Series, Part 1: What Is Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria and Why Does It Matter?

This is Part 1 of a series of articles. This one focuses on the research surrounding Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria and I think makes some important points about this phenomenon that is affecting many of our adolescents.

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Transgender Series, Part 2: ‘Truthful Therapist’ Explains Why Parents Can’t Trust Mental Health Professionals

Pamela Garfield-Jaeger is a courageous social worker who now has a practice called “The Truthful Therapist.” She is a therapist with several decades of experience dealing with mental health professionals and vulnerable people. She warns that the over-psychologizing of childhood is contributing to the rise of rapid-onset gender dysphoria and the trauma of kids mutilating their own bodies to pursue a transgender identity, rather than dealing with underlying psychological issues.

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Transgender Series Part 3: Detransitioner Medical Malpractice Lawsuits Will Yield $10M Judgments, Lawyer Says

In Part 3 of this series a lawyer predicts that medical malpractice lawsuits will soon be coming for medical doctors who prescribe “gender-affirming treatments” as dissatisfied detransitioners charge that they were permanently harmed by these treatments. Although surveys taken immediately after young people have gender-change surgery indicate that the majority feel satisfied with their surgery, in the coming two years many become increasingly dissatisfied and decide to detransition.

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HHS Says It Has Only Two Pages Of Scientific Evidence Backing Its Support For “Gender-Affirming Care”

Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine’s has said that “gender-affirming care” is “necessary” for transgender youth and no scientist doubts this fact. When asked to provide support for these statements that Department of Health and Human Services produced a two-page document which is more a marketing statement for “gender-affirming care” than a scientific article. Read this article to see how thin the evidence for gender-affirming care” truly is.

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Canada Forced to Stop Euthanizing Mentally Ill as Doctors Refuse to Comply

Canada has for several years had a medical assistance in dying program for people with terminal illnesses. A few years ago legislators approved an expansion of this assisted suicide program to also include individuals with mental illnesses. However, so many physicians refused to participate that Canada has been forced to postpone the implementation of this program.

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Therapists Trade the Couch for the Great Outdoors

This is another New York Times article that you won’t be able to read unless you have a subscription to that newspaper. Here is a brief summary. A few graduate programs, primarily in the far west, are starting to offer a class in ecotherapy, where counselors invite clients to spend time with them in nature. Traditional therapists have some serious questions about it, and about the boundary issues it raises. So this may never become a widely used practice, but I thought you might be interested in knowing about this development.

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8 Benefits of Having a ‘Public’ Bipolar Crisis

Many people who have bipolar disorder seek to keep it a secret or share this information with only a few select friends. This writer, who was a reporter for the New York Times, and who was in a manic phase when he fabricated and plagiarized extensively, which led to a forced resignation, says that there are a number of benefits of having a public bipolar crisis. Interesting reading.

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Bipolar and Relationships: Managing the Push-Pull Dynamics

Because of the emotional changes in bipolar episodes maintaining friendships has added challenges, and yet having a few friends who understand bipolar and can be with you during episodes is even more important. This is an exceptionally good article that I think would be very helpful to someone with bipolar and their spouse to help them build a support system.

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Suicide Risk 8-Fold Higher After Common Reproductive Disorder Diagnosis

Especially for those of you who sometimes counsel with young women, you should be aware that this research study from Taiwan found that when women are diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (often abbreviated as PCOS), that their suicide risk is eight times higher than women who do not have this diagnosis.

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How the Average Kid Gets Sex Trafficked: Top 6 Ways to Protect Them

This article has some startling points: at the very beginning it lists the top media sites that are used to get children sex trafficked, and my hunch is that most children are allowed on at least 2 or 3 of those sites. And then at the end of the article are the top 6 ways parents can protect them. I think all parents of children and teens would be wise to take a couple minutes to read this article.

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Jury finds Jennifer Crumbley, the Michigan school shooter’s mother, guilty of manslaughter

If you do family counseling you will probably want to pay attention to this trial and the one which will follow of the father, for it is the first time a parent has been convicted of a serial murder committed by their child. The jury of six men and six women deliberated 11 hours before returning the verdict of guilty of manslaughter for each of the four classmates killed by their son, so it was evident that they carefully weighed the evidence before reaching their decision.

There was plenty of evidence indicating negligence on the parents part. The son had communicated how troubled he was to his parents, but his parents apparently downplayed his requests, saying that it was just “Ethan being Ethan.” They bought him a gun and allowed him to have free access to it and to ammunition, and the mother had taken him to a shooting range just the day before, even though he had drawn pictures of shooting up his school, pictures which they knew about. The mother was involved in other activities, such as sex parties and affairs and taking care of her horses (some of these details are not in the article below, but in other newspaper articles). And even though school authorities asked the two parents to come to school and look at some drawings of shootings that Ethan had drawn on his schoolwork, they both went back to their jobs rather than taking him home and getting help for him. A few hours later Ethan killed 4 students and wounded 7 others with the gun he had brought to school in his backpack.

So the guilty verdict given to the mother (and I assume will be given to the father after his trial) should reassure parents and family counselors that if parents pay attention to their children, seek out care for them if they indicate they need it, and do not allow free access to guns, those kinds of precautions will be viewed quite differently than the actions by Ethan’s parents.

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Opioids Decimated a Kentucky Town. Recovering Addicts Are Saving It.

When the coal mines in Hazard, Kentucky closed down, many of the unemployed residents turned to drugs, and the town almost became a ghost town. But this story tells how people, many of them recovering addicts, are turning it around.

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Einstein’s 7 rules for a better life

Albert Einstein was probably one of the most brilliant scientists of all time, but he is also known for his sense of humor and his good ideas about living life. If you’d like to learn something about those ideas, see the following article.

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In Childhood Anxiety, CBT Helps by Normalizing Hyperactive Brain Circuits, Study Finds

Its been known for several years that CBT is a highly effective treatment for anxiety in adults. This research found that it is highly effective in treating childhood anxiety, and now because of brain scans, we also know the mechanism by which it causes this decrease.

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The Working Woman’s Newest Life Hack: Magic Mushrooms

For some women in high-powered jobs, microdosing on the psychedelic psilocybin, colloquially known as magic mushrooms has become a way to help get through their day. Although you may not have anyone in your practice who is using this now, its probably worth knowing something about this new practice.

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I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend!

Henry Virkler