Perspectives

SCG Staff Articles

Love Connection
Elizabeth Hirata Elizabeth Hirata

Love Connection

It turns out that subtly telling one another “hey, pay attention to me!” is one of the most common things we do in relationships with one another as humans…and…how we handle that moment can have profound effects on the health and future of our relationships and marriages.

If you want to know one simple, concrete thing you can do to improve your relationship with your partner TODAY - read this post.

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National Substance Abuse Prevention Month 2022
Elizabeth Hirata Elizabeth Hirata

National Substance Abuse Prevention Month 2022

October is National Substance Abuse Prevention month in the United States. I’m sure if you follow the news, you have heard about the rise in recent years in drug abuse, drug overdose, and drug-related deaths in the United States. In 2020, for example, drug overdose deaths rose nearly 30% from the year before, resulting in over 93,000 fatalities.

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Mental Illness Awareness Week 2022
Elizabeth Hirata Elizabeth Hirata

Mental Illness Awareness Week 2022

Established in 1990 by Congress, the first full week in each October is Mental Illness Awareness Week. All of us in this country, in one way or another, are affected by mental illness, and if you’re reading this, you no doubt know intimately and personally, the devastating effects thereof. The figures and statistics (1 in 5 adults and 1 in 6 children age 6-17 experience mental illness each year in the US {https://www.nami.org/mhstats}) are so large that it’s almost impossible to take in, to comprehend the scope of the issue.

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Truthiness and Couples Therapy
Elizabeth Hirata Elizabeth Hirata

Truthiness and Couples Therapy

Back in 2005, comedian Stephen Colbert created Webster’s word of the year that year on his hit satiric news show The Colbert Report, when he invented the word Truthiness. Truthiness, by definition, is the belief or assertion that a statement is true, based on how true something feels, rather than consulting evidence, logic, facts, or intellectual examination. Stephen Colbert applied this term Truthiness to describe how US politics works, where politicians and talking heads often made strong truth claims based on feelings about what was happening, rather than based on any sort of evidence, or logic to back up those claims (and I have to say, it doesn’t seem like the last 17 years has been marked by a decline in thinking rooted in Truthiness).

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