Counseling News from the Week of November 21,2025
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
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
Seneca the Younger, "Moral Letters to Lucius"
"Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out."
WC Handy
“How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.”
Marcus Aurelius, "Meditations"
"Just remember, you can't climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets."
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.”
William Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure"
"You look at things you enjoy in your life, but much more important is what you can do to make the world a better place."
Paul Allen, Microsoft cofounder
“Let a man be stimulated by poetry, established by the rules of propriety, and perfected by music.”
Confucius, "Analects"
"Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
Robert F. Kennedy
Fascinating Facts
The Man Who Lived Without a Brain
The fascinating story of a man who married, had children and a full-time career, and who for 44 years has lived what outsiders considered a normal life, but who, when he went to a doctor for a medical problem, was discovered to have no normal brain tissue. This whole situation raises significant questions about our understanding of the human mind. This seven-minute video is worth listening to. Apparently more than 600 people have been born with a similar condition, and some of them are gifted and many of them live what others consider normal lives. So apparently there are important things about the brain that we do not know, or when the brain is absent, there are other medical structures that can take over the functions we normally attribute to the brain.
Click here to read the full article
JD Vance Sentenced to Prison for Threatening To Kill JD Vance
JD Vance, a 67-year-old Michigan man has been sentenced to two years in prison for threatening to kill the Vice-President by the same name.
Click here to read the full article
What to Expect in Your 70s
As someone most of my way through the 70s, I can attest that this article is very accurate. If you’re still a long way away from your 70s, you can probably ignore it for now.
Click here to read the full article
Kissing Has Existed for at Least 16 Million Years, Scientists Say
I don’t know how to reconcile this with the biblical timeline, but according to some scientists kissing among humans has existed for at least 16 million years. And we aren’t the only species that does it—apparently ants, fish, and even the Neanderthals did it. You may not be able to access this article because it’sin the New York Times. (I guess this must have been a slow news day for the New York Times to carry this article.)
Click here to read the full article
Counseling Articles
What’s a Village For? A Response to Olga Khazan
This article begins with a critique of Olga Khazan’s article in the Atlantic entitled “The Most Useless Piece of Parenting Advice: The Problem with Telling Moms ‘It takes a Village.’” But I think the best part of this article is when this author describes the church as potentially the most helpful “village” there is. One sentence captures the essence of her discussion: “For us, church has become a beautiful village. It is a community of people dedicated to living life together and serving each other in our various phases of life. “
While not all churches reach that potential, I think this is a goal which all of our churches could strive for.
Click here to read the full article
High-Earning Women Are More Likely to Marry
To hear some feminists, marriage is for dependent women who couldn’t function without a man. This study found that statement is totally untrue. For women 25 to 39, higher earning women were more likely to marry than those women who earned lower salaries. The article explores this more.
Click here to read the full article
No, Pregnancy Is Not 'Bad' for Women
There are also some feminists who assert that pregnancy is bad for women and that childbearing and breastfeeding is burdensome. However, the research reveals that the opposite is true. And while raising children can be challenging at times, most women in the end say that having children was one of the most fulfilling parts of their lives.
Click here to read the full article
Standers Bear Witness to the Permanence of Marriage
“Standers” refer to those who remain faithful to their marriage vows, despite separation or divorce. Many even renew their marriage vows alone, as an expression of their commitment to marriage. For information about the Standers movement, read this article.
Click here to read the full article
How the Church Could (Literally) Save Your Life
Our culture today is obsessed with wellness tips. This book (the one with the title given in this headline), by Rebecca McLauglin, is packed with data showing that probably the best wellness activity available to Americans today is going to church. She shows that going to church provides multiple mental health benefits, including reducing depression and risk of suicide, and is also associated with an average increase in longevity of seven years.
Click here to read the full article
What Broke the Evangelical Women’s Blogosphere
Fifteen years ago there were several Christian influencers who were widely known and who had hundreds of thousands of followers. Then COVID and other things happened and many of these women, now in their 40s, have changed their focus and their audiences. If you are interested in this topic, this article gives a summary of some of these major figures and what they are involved in now.
Click here to read the full article
How Much Sex, Drugs and Violence Can Be in a PG-13 Movie?
This is from the New York Times, so you won’t be able to read it without a subscription, but I think this article from Tuesday’s Times should be warning to all parents to take the modern movie ratings with suspicion, for they contain so many caveats for any rating higher than PG that they are probably not suitable for determining whether your children should go see them.
Click here to read the full article
Does 'Sleepmaxxing' Really Improve Sleep?
People on the internet promote various things to promote deep sleep, including things like keeping your mouth closed during sleeping, white noise machines, taking a shower before bed, keeping the bedroom cool, eating certain foods before bedtime, or not eating for a certain number of hours before trying to sleep. The expert consulted for this article says that while some of these methods may improve sleep for specific clients, the important thing is to determine what works for you.
Click here to read the full article
'Nuremberg': Can You Diagnose Evil?
This review, by an esteemed psychologist (Dr, Arthur Caplan) of this new film delves into what caused the monstrous evils called “the final solution.” The atrocities were so horrendous that new criminal legal titles were even created for them at the Nuremberg trials. What could cause humans to become so evil? The psychiatrist and the film try to give some answers. Some Germans were bitter because they believed Germany was punished unfairly at the end of World War 1. Some individuals believed they had opportunities to rapidly rise in the Nazi ranks through their participation in the evil actions. Some were motivated by prejudice, some by misinformation. But perhaps the most unsettling conclusion was that some of the people who participated in these atrocities were simply "ordinary," "banal," and "terrifyingly normal."
Click here to read the full article
Priorities and the Use of Time
Here is a short devotional (I minute read) from the life of Coach Bear Bryant that is worth reading.
Click here to read the full article
12th grade girls are less likely than boys to say they want to get married someday
This report from the Pew Research Group has more information than just the title would indicate, and I think it has implications for those who counsel young people as well as those who teach Sunday School to this age group. It indicated declining numbers of young people who want to get married (especially girls) but also declining number of young people who want to have children or who think they will stay with their first marital partner throughout life. I think all three of these issues could be useful for counselors and Sunday School teachers to talk with young people about, because I think all three are based on misconceptions about what brings happiness to human life.
Click here to read the full article
Don't Let Grandma's WiFi Secretly Endanger Your Kids
Many parents will be visiting grandparents this Thanksgiving or Christmas. One thing they may not realize is Grandma’s Wi-Fi may not have some of the filters they have installed on their family system to keep their children safe. See this one-minute article for a good suggestion about how to keep your family safe during these visits.
Click here to read the full article
The Surprising Mood Benefits of Dark Therapy
For people with bipolar disorder, one treatment that can help, especially those with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder, is “dark therapy” which consists of cutting off blue light (which signals to our body that it is daytime) between the hours of 6 p.m. and the following morning. It is quite possible to try this inexpensively (e.g. by purchasing a pair of $10.00 blue-light glasses) to see if it will improve mood stability for a given individual (it works for some but not all people with bipolar disorder). See other specific ideas in this article if it is relevant for you or any of your clients.
Click here to read the full article
Final Trump Administration Report Sharply Questions Benefits of Medical Gender Care for Kids: Newly Identified Authors Criticize Poor Scientific Evidence
The final report on the benefits of medical gender care (puberty-suppressing drugs, cross-gender hormones, and gender change surgeries), is 400 pages long with a 240-page addendum. It was prepared by nine persons considered experts in the field. Two professional groups, the Endocrine Society and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have been strongly supportive of gender transition treatments in the past and were very critical of the initial drafts of this report, and were both invited to provide formal statements, but neither has done so.
It may be that the tide is turning against transgender philosophy. Biologists, parents, and athletes (including the International Olympic Committee) are moving in the direction of saying there are only two genders, that women’s personal spaces are to be respected, and that in fairness to female athletes, only persons who are born female should be able to compete in female sports. Undoubtedly there will be still a few who will continue to argue for transgender issues, but it seems that the culture as a whole are coming to accept that there are only two genders, even though there are rare individuals born with genetic abnormalities.
Click here to read the full article
Your Doctor Has 15 Minutes—Know How to Make Each One Count
While not a counseling article, I think this is a worthwhile article for all of us who visit a doctor. Studies show that 3 out of 4 people leave their doctor’s office unclear about something. This article gives practical suggestions for how to make the most of your doctor’s visit.
Click here to read the full article
When People in Distress Deny Being Suicidal, Should They Be Believed?
You probably won’t be able to read this article without a subscription to the New York Times, but because it’s so important, I’ll summarize some of its major points and include a few quotations from the article. Here is a reason this topic is so important: suicide is the third leading cause of death in persons between the ages of 15 and 29. Many of these folks give no warning beforehand of their suicidal intentions, including to their counselors, if they have one, and if they have a counselor and are asked if they are feeling suicidal, they will deny it. The Columbia Protocol, which is the most recognized manner for recognizing suicidal intent, suffers from this inadequacy.
Dr. Igor Galynker, a psychiatrist, was motivated to begin this study after three of his patients committed suicide. He and his colleagues at the Suicide Prevention Research Lab at Mt. Sinai in New York have developed a name for this—Suicidal Crisis Syndrome. They have been working on this issue for 15 years and hope to propose a new diagnostic category for the upcoming DSM.
Here are a few quotes from the article describing Suicidal Crisis Syndrome. “Suicide crisis syndrome is considered the last of a four-stage mental progression toward suicide that often begins with ongoing problems like alcoholism and the lingering effects of childhood trauma. When these issues are combined with character traits like perfectionism or impulsivity as well as stressful life events and thoughts of being a failure and a burden, it creates a perfect storm.
”Dr. Galynker said, patients must have a “persistent and intense feeling of frantic hopelessness,” in which they feel trapped in an intolerable situation.
“They must also have emotional distress, which can include intense anxiety; feelings of being extremely tense, keyed up or jittery (people often develop insomnia); recent social withdrawal; and difficulty controlling their thoughts.
“By the time patients develop S.C.S., they are in such distress that the thinking part of the brain — the frontal lobe — is overwhelmed, said Lisa J. Cohen, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai who is studying S.C.S. alongside Dr. Galynker. It’s like “trying to concentrate on a task with a fire alarm going off and dogs barking all around you,” she added.
This combination of symptoms is now being used in select Suicide Prevention Centers around the United States to try to assess suicidality.
Click here to read the full article
I hope you enjoyed these articles. If you are a counselor I encourage you to make a copy of the commentary on this last article on Suicidal Crisis Syndrome since I hadn’t read this information on doing such a thorough analysis of a client’s likelihood of suicide risk anywhere else.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Henry Virkler