Counseling News from the Week of August 28, 2026
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.
Interesting Quotes
“If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved.”
Samuel Adams
"Without goals, training has no direction."
Natalie Coughlin
“It is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.”
Hippocrates, "The Law"
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
Mark Twain
"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."
Neil Armstrong
“Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.”
Margaret Thatcher
"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread."
Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu
"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose."
Lyndon B. Johnson
"Purpose is an essential element of you ... the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose."
Chadwick Boseman
It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.
Margaret Thatcher
Fascinating Facts
Articles from this section have been moved to next week to make room for counseling-related articles.
Counseling Articles
The Ruthless Efficiency of Ultrapotent Street Drugs
This is from the New York Times, so you may or may not be able to read it, but this summary will suffice if you cannot. It is relatively easy for criminals to create new drugs to mix with other drugs and then sell them. The common drugs that people are buying off the streets are often a combination of fentanyl and an unknown mix of other drugs that have never been tested for safety. So if you have clients who are buying drugs off the streets, please warn them of the dangerous, often deadly consequences.
Click here to read the full article
When Depression Resists Treatment
This is also from the New York Times, so if you can’t access it, here is a summary. Treatment-resistant depression is defined as a situation where counseling and multiple antidepressants have been tried and the depression remains. This is sometimes found in people who have experienced abusive childhoods or have unrealistic expectations of what recovery should feel like. But if both issues have been looked at and treated, some other treatments that may be tried would be combining an antidepressant with an atypical antipsychotic or lithium, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), or ketamine. Counselors can also find out whether clients are still doing any things that might be enjoyable. Sometimes when people have experienced treatment-resistant depression for a period they’ve stopped doing many activities that might bring them pleasure.
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Is there a revival in the US? The real data says no
Arnie Cole has been a behavioral researcher for 20 years and is the CEO of Back to the Bible. While he says there are some upward trends in specific parts of spiritual life in America (e.g., the number of Americans embracing Catholicism), these don’t amount to what should be considered a revival.
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What If My Teen’s Friends are Bad News?
Parents are right to be concerned when their teens start hanging out with other teens who engage in clearly unhealthy behavior. But what are they to do?
Mark Gregston has some good advice for all parents in this situation. The exact action may differ depending on their teens’ age and other factors. These are good points for parents to consider.
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How Your Imperfections Can Help Your Teen
There is a one-minute advertisement for Heartland at the beginning of this interview, but then it is followed by a 14-minute radio interview that emphasizes the point that when families live under the illusion that they are perfect, they remain unhealthy, but when parents confess that they have been imperfect when discussing misbehavior with their child, this opens the door to helping the child learn from their misbehavior and hopefully make better choices in the future.
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10 Science-Backed Habits for Happiness
Many articles on happiness don’t seem to have much to offer. This one is different, and I encourage you to take a moment to read it.
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Overcoming Challenges in Multigenerational Families
Today some grandparents, parents and children live together in a shared dwelling. This kind of arrangement produces some challenges not found in other living arrangements, but this article says these challenges can be overcome and provides some practical suggestions for doing so.
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Cancer mRNA Vaccine Succeeds in Late-Stage Trial, Companies Say
You may have seen brief announcements about this, but Merck and Moderna have said that research has shown that that an MRNA vaccine prevented recurrence of skin cancer in patients who had previously been diagnosed with this cancer, and plan to apply for FDA approval. Also encouraging is the idea that a similar approach might in the future also produce treatments for other kinds of cancer.
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In related cancer news, the FDA approved a new cancer drug, daraxonrasib, after results in a clinical trial showed that patients who got the pill daraxonrasib, lived twice as long as those who got chemotherapy.
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What’s Wrong with the 'Prenup Boom'? It Teaches Couples to Fail
Now more than ½ of engaged or newly married couples have prenuptial agreements written, many before they married. Several possible reasons are cited: (1) Many couples are older before they marry and many of them are bringing significant financial resources into the marriage, (2) People who have already experienced one divorce are more likely to require a pre-nup, (3) divorce laws in some states do not allow judges to consider marital infidelity or abuse in deciding how to divide marital assets, and (4) there is growing cultural acceptance of pre-nups, and not just for the uber-wealthy.
But prenups do affect relationships. Having a prenup lowered the level of commitment couples had to each other, lowered the couple’s confidence that a divorce wouldn’t happen, and unfortunately, often became a self-fulfilling prophecy. So think carefully before you agree to sign a pre-nup.
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The Vice President’s New Baby and the Case for Paternity Leave
Vice-President Vance has publicly made the case for the U.S. to allow paid paternity leave for husbands. When his wife had their fourth child, he cited that his responsibilities as Vice-President did not allow him to take paternity leave himself, but he advocated that when family situations allowed it, fathers also have some time after the birth to spend time with their newborn.
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Is High Speed Internet the Reason You’re Not Married?
Two investigators found that when high-speed Internet was introduced in an area, the frequency of non-college-educated men being involved in dating relationships, friendships with peers, and hours spent working decreased (the correlation did not hold up for college-educated men). Their article included several caveats, but it recognized that there does seem to be some relationship between access to high-speed internet and these factors.
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Christian Counseling Faces Crisis You Haven’t Heard About
This article talks about the dearth of men going into the counseling profession. It emphasizes the fact that young men who need mentors may not be able to find them.
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Lindsay Clancy and the Nuance We No Longer Allow
The story of Lindsay Clancy, who killed her three young children, and what should her sentence be, has challenged both conservatives and liberal, and as of Friday is now in the hands of the jury. There are hundreds of women marching outside the courtroom on her behalf, and at least 25 different T-shirts have been created to support her.
Lindsay received psychiatric treatment at McLean Hospital, which is considered one of the best psychiatric hospitals in the country, which questions her defense attorney’s accusation that she received improper care.
She strangled her children one at a time with an exercise cord, while the surviving children watched in horror. She then attempted suicide by throwing herself out a second-story window, which left her partially paralyzed.
After their deaths Lindsay was diagnosed with bipolar depression and postpartum psychosis, but these diagnoses, like almost everything else in the trial, were debated by experts taking both sides of the issue. (It seems implausible that the bipolar disorder was missed in her treatment at McLean Hospital.) Molly Engelhart writes a very compassionate, and I believe balanced article and raises a question at the end that may point out how to reduce the likelihood of such tragedies happening in the future.
Lindsay did have a nanny and a husband who worked from home, so she had more support than many women have when raising young children. Also three psychiatrists with experience in psychosis claimed after their interviews with Lindsay that they believe she was not psychotic at the time of the murders and could understand the difference between right and wrong, which is a crucial ingredient in deciding whether a person is innocent or guilty. Two factors arguing against an innocent verdict are that she sent her husband away on several time-consuming errands before the incident, suggesting premeditation, and then paused to answer a telephone call before returning to complete the murders. But the jury must be unanimous to convict, so if even one juror believes she lost her ability to recognize right and wrong during the period of the killings, it will result in a mistrial.
The judge has given the jury three options: first degree murder, second degree murder, or manslaughter. If the jury decides on a guilty verdict, the punishment could range from life imprisonment without the possibility of parole to a shorter sentence. If the jury sides with the defense, she will be remanded to a psychiatric hospital.
Click here to read the full article
Forget 8 hours — new research reveals how much sleep adults really need
New research reveals that adult humans around the world regularly sleep between 5½ and 7½ hours. Everyone’s body is different, so it’s important to get as much sleep as you need to feel alert throughout the day.
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Study’s Alarming Finding: At Least 1 in 4 N.F.L. Players Gets Brain Disease
You may not be able to read this article because it’s from the New York Times, so here’s its major point. An estimated 25% of players in the N.F.L will end up with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (C.T.E) due to the trauma connected with football. The condition was first diagnosed with boxers a few decades ago. In football players it was initially downplayed by the NFL, but as more families donated their loved ones’ brains for research after their deaths, it was discovered that about 25% suffered from signs of C.T.E.
There are some things parents can do to protect their children who wish to play football. High school coaches are now being trained to not have teens tackle with their heads. And the damage does not seem to be primarily concussions, but the damage when brain tissue direction is quickly changed by collisions. Modern helmets are being designed that hopefully will reduce this damage but it is important to demand that high schools follow these new guidelines, since CTE has been found in children as young as 14.
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Dolly Parton, music star, actor and beloved figure who spanned generations, dies at 80
Dolly Parton was one of 12 children raised in a “dirt-poor” one-room cabin in Tennessee. She became famous as a singer and later as an actress. She wrote 3000 songs and had an incredible soprano voice and songs that spoke to millions. She was a successful entrepreneur and donated to charities and hospitals and gave thousands of books to children from less wealthy families. She was open about her Christian faith and inspired millions with her life. It is remarkable that she lived a very public life for 60 years and never once suffered a major scandal. She died after a brief battle with cancer. President Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for a week to commemorate her life, a rare if not unprecedented honor for an entertainer.
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Is Mouthwash Bad for Your Oral Health?
There have been some recent reports on social media that worry some people about the safety of using mouthwash. According to several experts, the occasional (a few times a week) use of over-the-counter mouthwashes for your oral health is fine. The standard use of antiseptic mouthwashes, which kill both good and bad bacteria and can only be purchased with a prescription, may alter the mouth microbiome and may be less good for your overall health.
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There’s Really Only One Way to Stop Students from Cheating
This article is from the New York Times, so you probably won’t be able to read it unless you have a subscription. The author makes the point that AI makes it easier than ever for students to cheat, and that the only way to stop it is to help students develop a sense of moral integrity—a sense of the rightness and wrongness of cheating—which many teens and young adults do not have today. He recommends trying to convince young people that “the ends don’t justify the means. What we achieve may define our success, but how we achieve it determines our character.”
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Diagnosing Disrespect
It’s not uncommon for teens to show disrespect to parents, at least occasionally. Mark Gregston has, I think, some good suggestions for how parents should deal with disrespect.
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UCSF QBI Awarded $46M to Translate Landmark Autism Map into Precision Therapies
The most thorough map of the brain that identifies brain abnormalities that are believed to lead to autism has been created, and a 46-million-dollar grant has been awarded to translate this map into precision therapies.
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SMU cancels 'unapologetically Muslim' CAIR event on campus
Quoting words from a Christian Post article, “A Texas university named earlier this year as the second-best Christian college in the U.S. says it will no longer host a scheduled event for an Islamic group deemed to be a “terrorist organization” by the state.”
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I hope you enjoyed this week’s articles!
Henry Virkler