Articles from the Week of May 24, 2024
Explanation: Although I scan the Internet primarily for counseling articles, in the process I run across quotes and interesting facts that I sometimes include in these first two sections. If you’re just interested in the counseling articles, you can skip these first two sections and go directly to the section called Counseling Articles. HV
Interesting Quotes
Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.
Confucius
Enthusiasm is common. Endurance is rare.
Angela Lee Duckworth, author
Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.
Winston Churchill
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Marie Curie
How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!
Proverbs 16:16
Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.
James 3:13
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.
Proverbs 11:2
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Isaac Newton
We must all learn to live together as brothers — or we will all perish together as fools. This is the great issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone. We are tied together.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Fascinating Facts
"Yahoo" is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle" (Source: NeedtoKnowFacts.com)
The “Mona Lisa” once hung in Napoleon Bonaparte's bedroom (Source: HistoryFacts.com)
The year 46 BCE was the longest year in history, at 445 days
“In the first century BCE, Rome’s calendar was a mess. The timekeeping system was first instituted around 700 BCE (back when Rome had kings), and from the start, the calendar had some issues. The year was 355 days long with an extra month added at the discretion of the pontifices, high-ranking priests who were in charge of the calendar. As the system was imprecise and subject to mismanagement, over time the calendar became misaligned with the seasons. What’s more, pontifices often abused their power by lengthening the terms of their allies and curtailing them for adversaries.
“When Julius Caesar became dictator of Rome in 49 BCE, he decided a change was in order, both to limit the pontifices’ power and to create a more effective calendar for administering a growing empire. With the help of Greek astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria, Caesar instituted the eponymous Julian calendar on January 1, 45 BCE. But to make the switch to the new calendar, Romans had to withstand what’s now known as the “last year of confusion.” At this point, Rome’s calendar was roughly three months out of whack with the seasonal harvest festivals, so Caesar inserted three extra months into the year 46 BCE, known as “intercalary months,” to get his 365-day calendar realigned with the solar year. For those living within Rome’s borders, 46 BCE — at 445 days long — became the longest year in history.” (Source: HistoryFacts.com)
Counseling Articles
Wiley to Shutter 19 Journals
Wiley, a major publisher of academic journals in various areas, including psychology and counseling, has decided to stop publishing 19 journals because of fake data. This is not primarily because researchers made an unintentional mistake, but because the data was purposely falsified. Wiley has retracted 11,300 fake studies in the last two years, and apparently other publishers have had to retract studies with compromised or fraudulent data.
“The fraudulent papers come from “paper mills,” businesses that charge their clients a fee to list them as an author on a fake study and submit it to academic journals. Paper mills often submit to multiple journals at once to have the best chance at getting published.” (Inside Higher Education).
One of the implications of this for us as counselors and consumers of these studies in our use in counseling is that we probably should not accept the results from a single article unless that same finding has been found by more than one researcher and reported in more than one journal.
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Therapeutic Cannabis Use by Breastfeeding Moms Raises Concerns Over Infant Exposure
It seems the federal government is bound and determined to change the ranking of cannabis, even though present cannabis is several times stronger than previous versions of cannabis. We don’t have long-term results of infants ingesting this, so it may be a while before we can make definite statements about the results.
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Some Conservative Christians Are Stepping Away from the Gender Wars
This article is from the New York Times, so you may not be able to read it unless you have a subscription. The gist of it is that more and more evangelical Christians are faced with children who identify as transgender, non-binary or gay, and parents are struggling with how to respond and remain true to their understanding of the Bible and yet retain a relationship with those children. Pastors’ counsel may vary from encouraging parents to kick the child out of their home to finding some way to show love and acceptance to their child despite disagreeing with their thinking and behavior. This is probably an issue that will come to you as a counselor in the future.
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Hard to Argue with Logic of 13 Judges Who Say They Won’t Hire Columbia Grads
Perhaps you were disappointed that you didn’t get into an Ivy League college, or you are counseling with a young person who is certain they want to get into an Ivy League college. What has recently happened at many of the Ivy League colleges has raised questions about the quality of graduates from those colleges. Although this article is just about what has happened at Columbia, it’s likely that employers will look more carefully at the graduates of many other Ivy League colleges. Attending a college with a strong emphasis on learning information and skills may be a better criterion for them to use as they plan for their future.
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19 Authoritative Parenting Tips for Raising Neurodivergent Children
Authoritative Parenting has been described as parenting that combines love and affirmation with setting appropriate boundaries and age-appropriate expectations. Although these 19 tips are written for parents of children with ADHD they would probably be helpful for most any parent.
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How to Raise a Self-Confident Daughter
Girls with ADHD (often Inattentive ADHD) struggle with poor self-esteem because their inattentiveness often causes them to fail to meet expectations at school and at home. While these three tips are written for parents of girls with ADHD, I think these three tips could be relevant for any parent whose child is struggling with low self-esteem.
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What You Need to Know About Summer Mania
Summer can trigger episodes of hypomania or mania in those people with bipolar disorder. Here are some thoughts from respected bipolar disorder blogger Tanya Hvilivitzky about maintaining mood stability as summer approaches.
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Early Evidence Supports Ketogenic Diet for Mental Illness
Evidence from a small initial study found that a ketogenic diet reduced symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder by about 30% and reversed metabolic syndrome in and resulted in a 10% weight reduction in patients. While this was in a small sample and was an initial study, this research suggests paying attention to further studies in this regard.
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It Would Be Nice if Olive Oil Really Did Prevent Dementia
A couple weeks ago I included an article that asserted that women who consumed olive oil had lower rates of dementia-related death. (The study found that this did not hold true for men.) This doctor has a short article explaining why we should not be too quick to endorse these results without considering some of the other factors that might be contributing. It’s a good reminder that human life and diet are often more complex than simple factors would suggest.
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Alcohol to Blame: Weight Regain After Bariatric Surgery
If you have a client who has had bariatric surgery it might be wise for you and for them to read this article. Apparently alcohol use can increase and can cause substantial weight gain following surgery.
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New Study Finds 12-Fold Higher Suicide Risk for People Who Had Gender Surgery
You may already be aware of the complexities of trying to use surgery to convert a penis to a vagina or to convert a vagina into a penis. This large study, done across many clinics and countries using 90,000 clients, found that the medical complexities were not the only downside: the suicide risk for those who had gender surgery was 12 times higher than those who did not.
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Music Therapy: Sound Medicine for ADHD
Although this article is primarily about how music can be used with clients who have ADHD, it also mentions ways music has been used in treating several other issues. Interesting reading.
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We Demand Attention on Self-Harm, Intimate Partner Violence, and Substance Abuse Among Women with ADHD
Probably not many counselors are aware that older teens and women with ADHD are more likely to engage in self-harm, attempt suicide, experience intimate partner violence and develop substance abuse problems than their neurotypical peers. And proven techniques that work with women with ADHD have often not been developed. Sounds like a fertile area for those willing to do research.
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Supreme Court won’t hear parents’ challenge to school district hiding gender transitions
In a disappointing decision, the Supreme Court decided not to consider a group of parents’ challenge to a school district’s decision to hide gender transitions from parents. The Court’s rationale for declining to hear this case is that parents didn’t know if their children were hiding their gender transitions, so therefore they didn’t have standing to bring the case. While this legally might be a technical reason to decline to hear the case, hopefully a case will be brought where the Supreme Court will issue a ruling on this matter. Especially in light of the Cass Report from Great Britain and research like that mentioned above that the suicide rate of children who had gender change surgery is 12 times higher than that of their peers, it seems like there is plenty of evidence that schools and doctors should use the information from multiple European countries that formerly were supporting gender-affirming treatments that are now backing away from their former policies to realize that hiding this information from parents is not in the child’s best interest.
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‘Ambiguous Loss’ and Grieving the Child We Never Had
A very thoughtful and moving story of a woman with bipolar disorder who, after four years of discussions with her husband, decided not to have or adopt a child. She also talks about the “ambiguous loss” she has felt because of that decision.
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Wealthy Women Paying Big Bucks to Engage in “Rage Rituals” in the Woods
Here’s a new kind of “therapy” for those interested.
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I’m a Jewish alumna of Christian colleges —where I found a safe home
This isn’t a counseling-related article obviously, but in contrast to so many Ivy League colleges where there have been strong antisemitic protests, it’s encouraging to hear that this Jewish student found not only safety, but encouragement at two Christian colleges.
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Can mental health conditions spread among teenage classmates?
Interesting article with implications for those who would like to do research in the future. It’s found that having even one student in a class with a mental health problem often results in having several more students in that class coming down with the same mental health issue. The research possibilities could focus on identifying the mechanisms that foster this spread, and then later, how to develop interventions that would reduce this spread.
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Google’s ‘AI Overviews’ advises adding glue to pizza sauce, lists ‘health benefits’ of tobacco for tweens
It appears that Google’s AI still needs some fine-tuning before people should take it’s suggestions seriously.
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Covert Narcissism Unmasked
The typical narcissist is rather easy to spot. This therapist and writer talks about a different kind of narcissism—covert narcissism—and has some interesting thoughts to ponder.
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The Secret Sin of ‘Mommy Juice’
In case you haven’t heard of “mommy juice” it’s one of the new synonyms for alcohol, and alcoholism is becoming, or has already become, a serious problem for young girls and women. We know that women become more easily addicted to alcohol, it causes more serious medical problems for them than for males, and the percentage of underage girls who are using alcohol is higher than for boys. This article from Christianity Today discusses further details.
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I hope you have a wonderful week or weekend!
Henry Virkler