Articles from the Week of March 14, 2025
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
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe."
Anatole France
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Just as iron rusts unless it is used, and water putrifies or, in cold, turns to ice, so our intellect spoils unless it is kept in use.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
Malcolm Forbes
The principal goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done.
Jean Piaget
“A sure sign of a good book is that you like it more the older you get.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.."
Albert Einstein
I have great respect for the past. If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going.
Maya Angelou
History is a strange teacher. It never repeats itself exactly, but you ignore its general lessons at your peril.
Madeleine Albright
Life is divided into three terms: that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.
William Wordsworth
I can't give you a recipe for success, but I can give you a recipe for failure: try to please everybody.
Frank Langella
Fascinating Facts
Wisconsin 4-year-old gets frosty surprise after calling cops on mom for eating his ice cream
Not a counseling article, but kind of a heart-warming story that you might enjoy. A four-year-old called the police last week to complain that his mother had eaten his ice cream. When the police arrived he had had a change of heart, and said he didn’t want his mother to go to jail. The police came back the next day with some ice cream to make up for what his “naughty” mother had stolen.
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Europe’s Most Dangerous Supervolcano on the Verge of Eruption
The Campi Flegrei supervolcano, near Naples, Italy, appears to be on the verge of erupting. A “supervolcano” is one that has the explosive power of a Magnitude 8 on the Volcanic Explosive Index, and it is estimated that such an eruption could kill ½ million people, mostly those in the immediate vicinity.
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Our Meandering Magnetic North Pole
You probably know that the position of the Magnetic North Pole changes, but you may not know why. It is apparently caused by shifts in the molten iron in the earth’s outer core.
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Counseling Articles
Alzheimer Disease Diagnosis and Care
This 15-slide presentation from Medscape is the best presentation I have seen on explaining Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and care. While some of the medical information will not be understandable to non-physicians, there is much in these fifteen slides that will be helpful. Especially considering all the controversies about Alzheimer's fraud, this is probably trustworthy information.
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Americans Still Want Children
Interesting article on some of the conflicting ideas within our culture. Although some feminists have argued that children can handicap career-minded women, it seems that both men and women at some point in their lives feel an emptiness in their lives when they have no children. And for those of us who have children, there is probably nothing more precious than seeing children and grandchildren grow up and develop into wonderful, beautiful personalities.
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Foolish Husband Doesn't Know ‘Whenever You Get A Chance’ Means ‘Right Now’
I don’t include many things from the Babylon Bee because sometimes I admit I don’t get their points, but here was something I did understand and found quite funny. The article made the point that when your wife asks you to do something “When you get a chance” she usually would like you to do it right then.
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Judge agrees to release ‘Slender Man’ stabber from psychiatric hospital despite ‘red flags’
Not a counseling article, but because some of you may do forensic counseling I’m including it. A judge releases a person who had been in prison for several years for the attempted murder in the “slender man” assault several years ago. There were several actions that were shared by the psychiatric hospital authorities that led them to recommend that she not be released and was in danger of committing another assault or murder. If you read the article you may be surprised that the judge released her. Fortunately she is being released in Wisconsin, so hopefully she is not a danger to any of us.
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Yale Preprint Identifies Post-Vaccination Syndrome, Points to Lack of Recognition
Not a counseling article, but because you or your clients may have heard of it, I think it’s worthwhile to be informed. Post-Vaccination Syndrome (often abbreviated as PVS) is based on a small study done by Yale that found that a small percentage of those who received the COVID vaccine had a medical reaction to it. The symptoms included chronic fatigue, sleep difficulties, brain fog, and nerve changes, which sometimes lasted for months to years.
What made this study particularly challenging for researchers was that these symptoms are very similar to those of “long COVID.” However, long COVID is more frequent, whereas PVS is quite rare. And to reassure people, apparently a very small percentage of people have had negative reactions to other vaccines, so post-vaccination syndrome is not unique to the COVID vaccine.
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Psychedelic Use May Double Risk for Early Death
People who use hallucinogens are 2.6 times more likely to die by suicide, cancer, lung disease and overdose compared to the general public.
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How to Care for a Loved One with Dementia: 5 Expert Tips
Even though I don’t encourage subscribing to the New York Times because they are so biased in their coverage of political news, they do have occasionally excellent articles, such as the present one, from which I’ll summarize some of the major points.
Vaping is ineffective for quitting smoking
Some have asserted that vaping is less unhealthy than smoking, and it may be a way of helping people quit smoking. Both assertions appear to be untrue. Vapers tend to smoke more than cigarette smokers, and so may increase their intake of nicotine, and inhale other chemicals that have not been tested for safety. And other nicotine stoppage plans than vaping have proven more effective in helping people stop smoking.
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The Paper Advantage: Why Reading Print Is Better for Your Brain
This article has some amazing facts that most of us have never heard. Apparently having real books in the home makes several years difference in how much education young people are likely to eventually accrue. And reading things in a book involves more brain systems than reading the same content online. There are things in this article will probably be important to understand to maximize growth potential for our children.
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SCOTUS Agrees to Hear Challenge to ‘Conversion Therapy’ Ban
For many years multiple states have banned “conversion therapy,” which referred to counselors providing counseling for clients who struggled with sexual orientation issues, even those who said they had unwanted same-sex attractions and asked their counselors for help in changing them. A professional counselor in Colorado has sued the state for its ban on “conversion therapy” saying that it violates her right to free speech in the context of the counseling relationship. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case, so this case has major impact on Christian counselors.
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Albert Mohler on the Importance of the Supreme Court Hearing the Issue of the Conversion Therapy Ban
Since ½ of the States forbid licensed counselors from trying to help minors leave their same sex attractions, even when their same-sex attractions are unwanted, this Supreme Court ruling potentially has significance for counselors throughout a significant portion of the country. Albert Mohler’s discussion (the first 20 minutes) is worthwhile listening to. The last ten minutes is his discussion on misgendering, which is also worthwhile.
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The Critical Role of Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioners in Bipolar Treatment
This article explains what a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner is, why they can provide an important role in treating persons with bipolar disorder, and how one can go about finding one.
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I’m a detransitioner — Congress must stop hospitals’ abuse of kids like me
More and more young adults like Chloe Cole are realizing that transgender activists, therapists and doctors encouraged them to have breasts amputated, vaginas made into penises, and penises amputated and made into neovaginas, before they were of an age when they could understand the full implications of what they were consenting to, and many are now detransitioning, but will never be able to have some of the experiences they might have had as men and women.
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What Spiderman Got Right and Wicked Got Wrong
This Breakpoint article discusses the fact that some books, movies and comics have mixed good and bad into their characters in such a way that good and bad become confused. The authors recognize that all humans are imperfect beings and had some flaws, but that our heroes—George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, etc. stood for important good principles that outweighed their imperfections.
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A Recommendation for Therapists
The Psychotherapy Networker is a journal I’ve been subscribing to for several years. I’d like to recommend it to all therapists because I think it consistently has such good articles. This most recent issue is devoted to articles on counseling neurodivergent individuals, in this case individuals on the autism spectrum.
New Insights into Mechanisms Underpinning Susceptible and Resilient Responses To Traumatic Stress
This research was done using brain scans from mice, who apparently have brains with similarities to humans. They studied how mice brains of those mice who seemed resilient to stress differed from the brains of those mice who retreated from stress and became anhedonic and withdrawn.
If we can draw any human inferences from this study, the healthiest response to stress would be to think about the situation, either by oneself or in consultation with another person, and then respond. The person who experiences stress and then becomes withdrawn and inactive is less healthy than the person who responds with a plan of action.
Read the research and see if you draw the same conclusion.
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Your Kid Got into College. Does She Need a ‘Bed Party’?
This is from the New York Times, so I’ll describe it briefly. It’s a new trend in the last few years, of parents celebrating their daughter’s acceptance into college by decking out her bedroom with 1,000 to 2000 dollars’ worth of college memorabilia from the college where she’s been accepted. (Or you could put this money into a savings account for tuition.)
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How Connecticut house of horrors victim risked death with a snap decision to set fire and escape years of captivity
In a story of depravity and cruelty almost too hard to believe, a young man was kept imprisoned for 20 years in an 8 by 9-foot locked room by his stepmother, and fed hardly nothing (he weighed 60 some pounds when rescued). He escaped by setting the house on fire, and when the fire department arrived, managed to be rescued.
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MIT engineers turn skin cells directly into neurons for cell therapy
This is not a counseling article but is a major medical breakthrough that might be of interest to you if you have a client or loved one with a spinal cord injury or ALS. A group of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a process where skin cells can be converted to nerve cells. See article for more details.
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I hope you enjoyed these articles! Have a wonderful week!
Henry Virkler
