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Open research questions in Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics

68 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 3,641 Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • One of the strengths of qualitative research is its capacity to deeply explore unique and underexamined phenomena (Creswell & Poth, 2016). The professional challenges faced by those providing psychological services in the context of large-scale, collective traumas such as earthquakes remain a relatively unexplored area in the counseling literature (Kim & Han, 2021). The findings of this study may inform the development of more comprehensive policies and interventions aimed at addressing the challenges encountered by counselors working under the influence of shared trauma. This study offers a detailed understanding of the difficulties wounded healer school counselors face while supporting clients with whom they share traumatic experiences. When shared traumas are recent or unresolved, wounded healers are at increased risk for emotional exhaustion and burnout (Geoffrion et al., 2016). In this context, psychological resilience emerges as a crucial factor in mitigating the impact of trauma and maintaining counselors’ emotional and professional well-being (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2011). Enhancing psychological resilience is particularly vital for counselors operating in high-stakes environments affected by widespread trauma. Accordingly, better-structured and sustained opportunities for trauma-informed training, supervision, and personal therapy are needed. Although some trauma-related training and peer support from outside the affected regions were available, our findings indicate that these resources were typically short-term and insufficient in scope. Furthermore, our findings suggest that counselors working in disaster-affected areas often believe that external professionals cannot fully understand or address the needs of traumatized clients. This belief underscores the importance of empowering wounded healer counselors already embedded in these communities. These counselors are often more familiar with the students, families, and systemic dynamics, and they are uniquely positioned to provide culturally and emotionally relevant care (Conchar & Repper, 2014). Thus, prioritizing sustained support for locally based mental health professionals with shared trauma experiences may lead to better outcomes for clients. A critical finding of this study was the recognition among participants that shared trauma frequently led to shifts from empathy to sympathy and increased levels of self-disclosure. While most School Mental Health (2026) 18:270–2841 3 counselors perceived their self-disclosure as more beneficial than harmful, they also acknowledged the potential risks. For this reason, it is essential to clarify the dual nature of shared trauma; its potential to foster connection and empathy, as well as its risks to therapeutic boundaries and counselor well-being.

    School Counselors’ Challenges with Shared Earthquake Trauma During the Counseling Process: The Wounded Healer · 2026 · DOI

  • A variety of drawing practices are used as inspiration for the development of a tentative methodological framework based on an ethics of care, which can be of use in multiple research fields, including but not limited to the elderly care sector, which is used as the point of departure in this article.

    Rummaging Around in a Handbag of Caring Research · 2024 · DOI

  • Recognizing that individuals and groups subjected to treatment bearing its hallmarks do not have the appropriate means to express their experiences, and their perspective is not understood and considered in society, the author guesses that this impacts the process of reconstructing experiences during interviews.

    Niesprawiedliwość epistemiczna a możliwość śledzenia trajektorii cierpienia w wywiadzie autobiograficznym. Etyczny namysł nad metodą · 2023 · DOI

  • This pilot case study aimed to fill the gaps in research concerning the use of maps in therapy while also introducing a new concept in Internal Family Systems (IFS) of a structured formalized way to create maps with clients.

    Internal Relational Illustration: A Pilot Clinical Case Study · 2022 · DOI

  • Three broad theoretical arguments are offered regarding trauma within CSC: (1) trauma is rarely addressed outside peacebuilding interventions, but is relevant to other marginalized populations; (2) storytelling work has mostly focused on its politically empowering effects, and insufficiently on its healing effects related to trauma as a precursor to political empowerment; and (3) storytelling work almost always assumes an audience, but there is also value in internal communication – e.

    ‘Better safe than sorry’: examining trauma as an obstacle to empowerment and social change in a U.S. intimate partner violence intervention · 2021 · DOI

  • Offering choices through pictographs (Rowland & McDonald, 2009) can help people with Aphasia to answer open questions, whilst Talking Mats can facilitate conversation with people who have dementia (Murphy, Gray, & Cox, 2007).

    PROTOCOL: Communication skills training for improving the communicative abilities of student social workers: A systematic review · 2019 · DOI

  • By highlighting and reflecting together on the first author’s life with a chronic illness and his son’s disability, and thereby framing the narrative, it will be argued that, in order to improve care practices, personal illness and disability narratives and the way they interlock with public narrative and auto-ethnographic methodologies should be investigated.

    Challenging Standard Concepts of ‘Humane’ Care through Relational Auto-Ethnography · 2016 · DOI

  • Background & AIMS Previous research has shown that age categories play a vital part in the decision-making processes of counsellors in substance abuse services, yet very little is known about how the meanings of “age” and “substance abuse” are constructed and intertwined.

    “Focus on the young ones”: Discourses on substance abuse and age · 2015 · DOI

  • Although randomised controlled trials have demonstrated impressive support for Narrative ExposureTherapy in con£ict settings, several issues remain to be addressed prior to large scale use of the therapy within traditional cultures.

    Do we really have enough evidence on Narrative Exposure Therapy to scale it up? · 2014 · DOI

  • It is, however, limited by an exclusive focus on knowledge acquired through clinical practice, and a consequent neglect of the primordial and socio-cultural significance of embodied selfhood, precisely what provides the foundational structure of tacit knowledge of caring and facilitates its manifestation.

    Tacit knowledge of caring and embodied selfhood · 2009 · DOI

  • While a full, detailed history of the journal from its inception is beyond the scope of this paper, the authors offer glimpses of the journal at key points in its 25‐year history, and from these, readers can reconstruct some of the changes that have occurred, and the continuities in values and attitudes that the ANZJFT has attempted to preserve, throughout its existence.

    The ANZJFT: Snapshots From the History of an Evolving Journal · 2007 · DOI

  • Laying Down Invisible Boundaries In the field of education, we tend to focus on three types of narratives: Narratives of despair (which usually describe deficit models of what one particular individual or group[s] of individuals is lacking or not doing); narratives of success (which describe an individual or group[s] of individuals who have successfully overcome challenges against all odds); and narratives of inspiration (which describe theoretical frameworks and/or inspirational perspectives).

    Rejecting Mediocrity and the Politics of Domestication · 2005

  • Abstract Although feminists have been writing about and practicing feminist family therapy for over twenty years, writing about feminist family therapy supervision has been limited to a few in-depth personal designs and Avis' (1986) Delphi study.

    Experiencing Feminist Family Therapy Supervision · 2001 · DOI

  • Implications for Research The paper identifies several gaps in research relating to art psychotherapy, youth homelessness, complex trauma, countertransference, agency, engagement, retraumatization and practice adaptations.

    Art psychotherapy with youth in homelessness hostels · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research: Future research could consider the application of this framework with a community of people who have interest in processing a collective loss, using art, narrative and film to serve as a container of their experiences.

    Collective storytelling: art and film to process an unexpected loss · 2023 · DOI

  • Trauma-informed (T-I) approaches to working with vulnerable people have gained popularity in practice but are rarely used in academic research and little is known about the challenges of conducting a T-I approach to participatory research.

    What Does it Mean to Adopt a Trauma-Informed Approach to Research?: Reflections on a Participatory Project With Young People Seeking Asylum in the UK · 2023 · DOI

  • These counternarratives offer a reflexive example of the ethical and axiological considerations that should be examined as collectives approach inquiry as a healing and restorative space.

    Can Research Heal? Toward Restorative Validity: Axiological Commitments and Methodological Obligations as Contact Zones · 2023 · DOI

  • Despite IPV’s prevalence, limited research investigates the healing process for survivors or the benefits of GAT services and approaches.

    Exploring intimate partner violence survivors’ experiences with group art therapy · 2022 · DOI

  • Despite IPV’s prevalence, limited research investigates the healing process for survivors or the efficacy of group art therapy (GAT).

    Exploring intimate partner violence survivors’ experiences with group art therapy · 2022 · DOI

  • Narcissistic abuse is a hidden form of abuse and remains under-recognized in society and within the helping professions, partly due to victim difficulties in articulating the manipulative behaviors they have experienced.

    (Gas)lighting Their Way to Coercion and Violation in Narcissistic Abuse · 2022 · DOI

  • Abstract Empathy is considered a key component of chaplaincy care, but little is known about the daily practice of empathy and the empathy barriers that chaplains encounter.

    Empathic Flow: Dutch Humanist Chaplains’ Experiences with Professional Empathy and Its Challenges · 2022 · DOI

  • The healing of single, defined traumatic events is, in many instances, limited by a pervasive, insidious, and continuing process of damage to and distortion of the underlying culture.

    The Healing of Historical Collective Trauma · 2021 · DOI

  • Research shows that labeling oneself as a survivor creates a sense of empowerment, and yet, there is limited research about how an individual navigates the transition from self-perceived victimhood to survivorship.

    Turning points from victim to survivor: an examination of sexual violence narratives · 2021 · DOI

  • Poi spinning in the therapeutic milieu is a relatively new application of this practice and as such, additional research into the benefits of poi spinning as a healing practice is warranted.

    Embodiment Practice: Using Poi Spinning in the Healing Process · 2021 · DOI

  • In this underreported territory of using structured, arts-based, psychological therapy with those who have survived cultic abuse, the authors used a process of collective biography to compile a firstperson, combined narrative based on those reflections.

    Reflections on Offering a Therapeutic Creative Arts Intervention With Cult Survivors: A Collective Biography · 2020 · DOI

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68 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 3,641 Counseling, Therapy, and Family Dynamics papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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