Counseling News from the Week of October 9, 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
"Each of you, as an individual, must pick your own goals. Listen to others, but do not become a blind follower."
Thurgood Marshall
"After you make a fool of yourself a few hundred times, you learn what works."
Gwen Stefani
“Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they enkindle and melt the soul.”
Teresa of Ávila
"Education is one of the blessings of life—and one of its necessities."
Malala Yousafzai
“Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance.”
Francis of Assisi
Fascinating Facts: Nothing to include here this week
Counseling Articles
Concerns Escalate as Evidence of AI Stunting Student Learning Mounts
This article from the Washington Standard summarizes multiple concerns that observers have about the use of Chromebooks and AI in our high schools. Despite this concerning research it seems that most elementary and high schools are embracing this technology.
Read the next article for some ideas about how to help children and adults use AI more responsibly in their learning. The question is whether we will use this research to help children and young adults will use this information to become more effective learners. Hopefully teachers will use the research in this next article to help their students learn better ways to use digital resources and AI in their studies.
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Will A.I. Make Your Brain Lazy? Here’s What the New Research Actually Shows.
This is from the New York Times, so I’ll summarize its major points. When students were given the opportunity to use AI in answering questions, the quality of their answers and how much they retained a week afterward differed. Initially their answers when the test was done all by AI were scored a little higher than those who used AI to research their answers but wrote the results themselves. But a week later, those who used AI to research but then wrote their own answers retained more of what they had learned. So it appears that how we use AI will determine whether it will help us be smarter or less smart.
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What if A.D.H.D. Isn’t About Attention at All?
This article from the New York Times so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription, but because I think it’s one of the most insightful articles about ADHD I’ve read in a long time, I’m going to include several quotes here. The author, who is a psychiatrist says: “A major study published last year in the journal Cell spoke directly to this question. It looked at how stimulant medications influence the functioning of brain circuits in children. The researchers found that the drugs seemed to affect brain networks involved in salience, reward and arousal. But they found no detectable changes in the brain’s attention networks, whether or not the child had been diagnosed with A.D.H.D.
“It’s a clear signal that the most popular mental model for A.D.H.D. — as a deficit of attention that stimulants remedy — might not be entirely accurate.
“What would a better mental model look like? Part of the answer is understanding that “attention” means different things in the clinic and in the neuroscience lab. For scientists studying brain functions, attention means something narrow: the selective amplification of relevant information. It can be measured by laboratory tasks that assess, for example, how well someone ignores irrelevant or conflicting information or finds a target hidden among distractions.
“But that’s generally not what people mean when they are talking about attention problems in A.D.H.D.
“The classic features of A.D.H.D. include things like not staying on task, losing the thread of a conversation and forgetting instructions. They are failures of “sustained engagement.” If attention is about the mind homing in on what’s relevant in a given moment, engagement is about keeping that spotlight pointed at the same target over time. Doing so may be less a matter of filtering out distractions and more a matter of whether the task registers in the brain as worth doing in the first place.
“Once this distinction is appreciated, the results of the Cell study stop being contradictory. Stimulants create what looks like improved attention and focus, but they really do so by enhancing the salience of mundane activities — tricking the brain into assigning greater worth and significance to things like math homework and laundry.
“This also helps explain why stimulants like amphetamines calm down hyperactive children. People without A.D.H.D. who use amphetamines often find themselves jittery and revved up, so the calming effect may seem counterintuitive. However, if a child is restless and fidgeting because the task at hand isn’t rewarding enough, then it makes sense that stimulants would help that child sit still and stay engaged rather than seek stimulation elsewhere.
“The Cell study’s results focused mostly on what stimulants do, but scientists have been challenging the idea that A.D.H.D. is a deficit of attention since the 1990s.”
(End to quoted material): My comments: The author is not arguing that A.D.H.D. be done away with as a diagnosis or that this is not a brain disorder or simply a social construct (as some have argued. It is clear from research evidence that treatment with A.D.H.D. medications are associated with reductions in death, self-harm, transport accidents, criminal convictions and substance misuse. But perhaps we need to change the reason we think this diagnosis means.
Perhaps you can see why I thought this article was such a thought-provoking one about understanding the true nature of A.D.H.D. It may not be, as we have thought for a long time, an attention deficit disorder, but instead a deficit failure in maintaining “sustained engagement.”
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Religious Young Men Are Happier, Healthier, and More Successful
Recent studies have shown that a greater percentage of young men in general feel lonely and isolated, and many have only one or sometimes no close friends. But young men who attend church at least once per week are likely to have three or more close friends, are more likely to have graduated trade school or college, are more likely to be married, and are more likely to have good mental health and believe they have meaning and purpose in their lives.
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Children Bring Higher Meaning and Purpose to Life
While having children can bring stress and financial pressure to parents, especially during the early years, a recent Pew study from 17 countries found that having children resulted in parents saying they felt meaning and purpose in their lives, and this increase was positively correlated with the number of children they had.
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Why Married Women Are the Happiest Women
Secular feminists often still assert that marriage prevents women from developing their potentials and encourages women to avoid marriage. But the research increasingly says that a happy marriage, with children when that is possible, provides the most fulfilling context for women.
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As you can see from the previous three articles, research studies are now confirming that when young adults are living out God’s encouraged plans for living, they are most fulfilled and happy.
More Screen Time, Less Storytelling
Screens for young children seem to offer many advantages—easier car trips for parents, less fights with brothers and sisters, etc. But the research is showing downsides: when screen time increases, young children are less able to put together three-word sentences, ask why, what and where questions, or tell a story from beginning to end. Their ability to do these three things drops dramatically with increasing screen time. That is why the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending no screen time before 18 months, and only one hour per day until the age of 5. Most families do follow these recommended limits. Probably it is wise for pediatricians and family counselors to encourage parents to set limits on screen time and encourage their children to be involved in other activities instead.
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The 'Happiness Crash': As Young Adult Happiness Drops, Two Groups Are Thriving
Back in the 1960s Harry Harlow did some research with rhesus monkeys that demonstrated the importance of relationships for that species. Many studies since that time have shown the importance of relationships with others for the human species as well. But research, particularly on young men, shows a large number who are feeling lonely and isolated.
Two groups are exceptions to these trends: Those are married young people and religious young adults. Both groups are likely to stay more connected with other people.
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What Happens to Your Body When You Drink Coffee Regularly
This article documents 7 scientifically based benefits from drinking coffee, so for those of you who drink one or more cups to help you through the day, be encouraged that this is healthy. However, this does not mean that drinking more coffee will produce greater benefits: each person’s body will signal what the ideal amount of coffee is for that person to drink.
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From Sterilization to New Life: Vasectomy, Regret, and Reversal
With two rambunctious children running around, financial pressures and feeling exhausted, some couples opt for vasectomies for the husband after they have had two children, believing their families are complete. Vasectomies are quite easy to obtain. But some couples, as their children grow older and become a little less demanding and financial pressures decrease, realize they want more children. As this family did, they found that vasectomies can be reversed, though the procedure is a little more complex than the original vasectomy, and sometimes they are able to increase the size of their family.
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A Possible New Name for the DSM
I’m not going to include this article from Psychiatry Online, but it discussed the fact that American Psychiatric Association is considering changing the name of the DSM from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to Diagnostic and Scientific Manual of Mental Disorders.
When a Loved One Denies Their Bipolar Diagnosis
Some people with bipolar disorder deny that they have bipolar disorder, and their denial and unwillingness to seek treatment can play havoc on their family members. This article talks thoughtfully about what family members can do in that situation to protect themselves and their loved one. Eventually many people who have bipolar disorder realize something is wrong and do seek treatment. This article gives helpful suggestions to use until that happens.
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How Rumination Worsens Bipolar Depression — and What You Can Do
Many people ruminate, but this can be a particular problem with those with bipolar disorder and can often make their depression worse. This article discusses why and gives some suggestions for how to stop it when it appears.
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Loss and Anger in a Teen
Parents are often mystified about why their teen blows up, sometimes about things that do not seem to be that important. In this article Mark Gregston talks about one possible reason for this and then gives parents some suggestions about how to explore anger with their teen.
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When a Mood Disorder Looks Like ADHD — and Vice Versa: Differentiating Signs of Emotional Dysregulation
An in-depth article discussing how emotional dysregulation appears in several disorders, how to make differential diagnosis between those disorders, and how to treat an individual when they have dual diagnoses.
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Change of Heart: Understanding Cardiovascular Disease in Women with ADHD
The leading cause of death in women worldwide is not cancer, but heart disease. And heart disease in women often has different symptoms than with men. As this title indicates, heart disease is particularly prevalent in women with ADHD, but probably all women should read this article to be sensitized to symptoms of heart disease that need to be treated and might be otherwise missed.
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When Your Child Has ADHD and Dyslexia: Treatment for Complex Symptoms
It is estimated the about 35% of the time, children who have ADHD also have dyslexia. Most important for therapists, the treatments for ADHD may not help dyslexia and vice versa, and standard treatments for either one may actually make the other condition worse. If you work with children who might have one or both of these disorders, please read this important article.
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I hope you’ve found these articles useful.
Henry Virkler