Counseling News from the Week of October 2, 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

"I think a hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles."

Christopher Reeve

“We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart.”

Blaise Pascal

"Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving."

Albert Einstein

“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”

Hans Christian Andersen

If your entire theology is God is love and Do Not Judge you do not have biblical Christianity, you have Oprah.

Crystal A. Reid

"The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well."

John D. Rockefeller

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.”

Ronald Reagan

Fascinating Facts

The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza has for centuries mystified scientists, for it demonstrates engineering precision that conflicts with our presuppositions about the level of scientific understanding that would have existed in ancient Egypt 4,500 years ago. Recently some have hypothesized that the engineering was so advanced it must have been aliens from outer space that created it, yet since we still don’t have any evidence that aliens with advanced engineering skills exist anyplace in the universe, this theory doesn’t seem like a plausible explanation. For more information about this marvel, much of it is still unexplained, see article.

Click here to read the full article

Counseling Articles

I’m a psychiatrist. This is the terrifying reality of postpartum psychosis

This is the best discussion of postpartum psychosis that I’ve read. It’s from a British newspaper, so I’ll summarize its major points. Postnatal depression affects 10 to 15% of postnatal women. Postpartum psychosis is rarer, affecting about one in 1,000 women. In a postpartum psychosis the mother may hallucinate or have delusions, believing that her child has magical powers, or is possessed by some benign or malignant illness or entity. These hallucinations and delusions are easily treated with antipsychotics.

Lindsay Clancy was being treated at one of the world’s most respected psychiatric hospitals, so it is unclear why more safeguards were not established to protect her children. It is possible that she did not reveal any of her thoughts about harming her children to her caretakers.

This psychiatrist does not make any judgments about the Lindsay Clancy case. But with the current controversies being stirred up by this case I think this case will be a helpful one to follow in the coming months as more details become available.

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The Constitution: A Moral Challenge

This is not a counseling article, but I think it has important implications for any thinking Christian today. It is about a 5.5-minute video that I highly encourage you to listen to.

The Constitution was our founder’s second attempt to create a moral foundation for the new country. The country’s first attempt, the Articles of Confederation, had been a dismal failure, so the founders decided to rework it and included some additional ingredients to strengthen the areas that had been weak. While imperfect, they had read widely about ancient governments and European governments at that time and worked to use that information to avoid the things that caused other civilization to collapse and to establish a framework that has produced the most stable government in world history.

The Constitution created a series of checks and balances that were very important, and divided powers between the federal government and the states. The Founders were successful in negotiating a compromise between Southern states, which wanted slavery, and the Northern states, most of which did not. If it were not for this temporary compromise on the issue of slavery, the Constitution would not have been ratified.

A few years later the Framers added to the Constitution a Bill of Rights, which among other things established freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly.

Even the Framers did not live up to their high moral standards in every regard. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington owned slaves, even though they knew that slavery was incompatible with the freedom for all men that they were trying to create in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Jefferson later remarked about the conflict he felt about a just God and his personal owning of slaves. On his deathbed Washington freed his slaves and made financial provision for them in his will.

So while the Founders were imperfect human beings, they together created a foundation for a country that has become a beacon of liberty for the whole world.

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What Not to Say to Someone with Bipolar Disorder (and What to Say Instead)

This brief article by Tanya Hvilivizky gives several examples to comments that sometimes downplay the symptoms of people with bipolar disorder, and her suggestions of how to listen and talk with them that are more helpful.

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Here's How We Can Turn the Tide on the Dating Recession

Although at least 50% of young adults say they’d like to eventually find a life companion, most young people are only dating two or three times a year and say that modern dating is “too hard.” The article talks about some of the factors that may be causing this dating recession.

First is the format of many modern dating apps, that give people large numbers of choices of people to date and unintentionally encourage people that they have many choices about who to date, and as a result young people think there is plenty of time to date later and thus they go on few dates in any given year. Another hindrance has to do with mindset, where people view dating from a consumerist perspective, where they quickly dismiss dates for superficial reasons, rather than viewing dating from a covenantal perspective, where they look for a person who may not be perfect, but whom they are willing to make a commitment to help each other grow into the healthiest persons they can become.

The authors suggest that to turn the tide on the dating recession we need to change our approach to dating, and they offer a seminar to help young adults think through their attitudes toward dating.

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Boys at Risk: Online Gaming, Sports Betting, and Addiction

This article discusses articles about what is putting boy’s mental health at risk. While some psychiatrists prescribe medications for young adults, this article examines the behavioral habits that may be contributing to poor mental health. This includes excessive time spent video gaming, gambling, and time spent developing addictions and the shame that often results from those addictions.

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What AI Romantic Companions Can Never Replace

A quote from the article: “Imagine feeling lonely, anxious, or uncertain, and having someone available instantly. Someone who always responds, never criticizes you, never gets tired of listening, and consistently tells you that you are valued and important. For a growing number of people, that ‘someone’ is not another person. It’s an AI companion.”

While young adults are increasingly turning to AI romantic companions this article makes clear the flaw in such thinking. A good relationship requires commitment from the other person, and a willingness to make sacrifices by both people to make the relationship work. An AI romantic companion can never create these characteristics.

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For Most U.S. Newborns, Mom's Education Equals or Surpasses Dad's

Unlike earlier decades, when most men’s educations exceeded that of their wives, in today’s culture most newborns are born in families where the wife’s education equals or surpasses their husband’s.

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Faithful Christians Have the Happiest Marriages in America

As a greater number of people in our culture experience loneliness and isolation, it appears that faith and family provide an antidote that helps people feel like they are part of a community. Here are some of the key findings from recent research.  

Church-going Catholics and Protestants are more likely to be married, more likely to have more children, and less likely to divorce.

Christian couples have the happiest marriages in America.

Christian couples have more frequent sex.

Some Catholic couples do have concerns about the stability of their marriages, but Catholics in the more orthodox sections of their denomination seem to be most satisfied with the quality and stability of their marriages.

Click here to read the full article  

Morality and Science

Not a counseling article, but one that I believe most thinking Christians would be interested in. Richard Simmons, quoting respected atheists such as Albert Einstein and others, asserted that science can never produce a moral foundation for life.

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How Three Times Tech Journalists Make Sense of A.I.’s Promise and Peril

The issue of whether AI has the potential to end human civilization in the next ten years has been raised by many tech leaders and has caused concerns similar statements by international spokesmen as well as American thought leaders. This is from the New York Times, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription, I’m going to summarize one comment that seems to summarize what the major concern is. AI has no conscience--it simply has vast calculating powers. If one of the AI models starts misbehaving, there is no head of that AI model to contact to express concern. And the technology is advancing so rapidly, and Congress is so divided that they are unlikely to create legislation that would adapt to such a rapidly developing field.

Our concerns need to be communicated, preferably proactively, before there is a crisis, to the human developers of AI to help them develop safeguards so that such apocalyptic catastrophes never happen.

On Tuesday evening the leaders of all the major U.S. AI companies gathered at the White House and voluntarily committed to a self-policing agreement. Hopefully together with careful Congressional oversight safeguards will be developed. Let’s pray that they will.

Click here to read the full article

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/24/insider/nyt-journalists-artificial-intelligence.html

Click here to read a second article related to this topic

What Are They Teaching Teachers These Days?

If you read this article, you will be astounded at what they are teaching kindergarteners, first graders and second graders in one Colorado school. While Colorado might be a leader in “progressive education” this article describes that fact that teacher education programs nationwide have adopted some of these standards. Parents in public schools may want to investigate what their children are being taught. In light of the fact that test scores for principal subjects like reading, writing and math are dropping to abysmal levels here in the United States I think parents have a right to insist that public schools focus on the life-skills that students will need after high school to learn careers or go to college without needing to take remedial classes.

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Screen time ‘damages children more than being born into poverty’

This is from a British newspaper, the Telegraph, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription. But it was a large study, looking at children from 64 countries, and included the results from 23 previous statistical reviews.

Here are a few quotes and summaries from the study. “An analysis of more than 2.8 million children found heavier screen use was linked to poorer school performance, weaker language skills and more emotional [anxiety and depression] and behavioral problems. Researchers said the strength of these links was “similar in magnitude to or larger” than other established influences on child development, including socioeconomic status, parenting behavior and premature birth.”

So counselors, I think considering this wide-ranging research from many sources and multiple countries, we can safely say it is wise to encourage our parents to limit screen time and encourage their children to spend their time in other activities such as studying, interacting with peers, sports, and working.

Click here to read the full article

Ask the Doctor: Why Do I Get Depressed Every Fall?

Some people with bipolar disorder find they have an increased risk of a mood episode in the Fall. This is probably related to some relationship between their bipolar disorder and changing amounts of sunlight each day. This article spends time encouraging people with bipolar disorder to keep track of mood changes to detect differences and then be able to communicate this to their psychiatrist.

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There Is No Christian Case for Polyamory

Although some might think no Christians would believe that open marriages and polyamory is morally acceptable, apparently 50% of Americans under 30 believe it is, and probably at least some of them identify as Christians. [Clarification about the difference between open marriages and polygamy: Some believe in the concept of “open relationships” (having one or more ongoing sexual relationships simultaneously) even though they do not plan to marry that person, a situation that would formally be called polygamy)]. And even some who identify themselves as Christian spokesmen are arguing that there are biblical grounds for polyamory and polygamy. Although it may be hard for some conservative Christians to believe that anyone who identifies themselves as a Christian could support this thinking, this Breakpoint article shows the in-roads the concept of open marriage is making in our contemporary culture. One of the arguments being used is that the idea of committed love should override traditional definitions of family structure.

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A New Search Engine that Uses AI to Access Federal Government Sites and Access Services

On Tuesday evening President Trump announced a new AI-powered search engine that would allow users to search 29,000 federal websites and obtain official government information and services such as ordering a new visa, renewing one’s passport, checking the status of one’s voter registration, checking one’s Social Security benefits, or contacting a government official. All this information is available at no cost. The site is America.gov.

I hope you enjoyed these articles. Have a wonderful week!

Henry Virkler