Gifted adults have normal feelings of anxiety, inadequacies and personal needs. They struggle to have these needs met and taken care of just like all human beings do. Gifted adults are often confronted with the problem of having too many abilities in too many areas in which they would like to work, discover and excel.
If you were a gifted child, chances are you've had some serious mental health struggles now that you're a gifted adult. Many of them may have stemmed from gift-specific traumas in your childhood, or even some that you're experiencing in your adult life.
From the moment of birth, through childhood, adolescence and on through adulthood. Giftedness just doesn't appear in 2nd or 3rd grade when school districts determine who is gifted. It begins from infancy and stays with you through adulthood.
That means that in the US alone, there are more than 3 million gifted children who will grow into gifted adults. We know that gifted populations face common challenges like social connectedness, existential depression, and perfectionism. Yet, there are virtually no systemic supports in place for gifted adults.
We also should remember that giftedness does not diminish with age and 'does not go away', it is part of the individual and will manifest throughout all ages.
Without understanding and support, gifted kids face an increased risk of anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, along with social and academic problems. Currently, experts estimate that up to 1 in 50 gifted kids drop out of school, while many more fail to live up to their full academic potential.
Gifted children are challenging to parent in many ways. The more gifted the child, the more often it seems the more the parent is frustrated with the discrepancy of someone able to do school several levels above age level but unable to remember to take their finished work to school.
Gifted children may be more likely to experience existential depression, as their minds tend to be more attuned to contemplating the big life and death issues facing the world.
While gifted children may not be any more susceptible to mental health issues as other adolescents, there are certain aspects of giftedness that may influence or amplify a gifted child's experience of mental health issues.
In general, gifted children and adults tend to: Stand-out intellectually, with sophisticated thinking styles that integrate generalizations and complexity. Learn quickly and deeply (and do not need as much practice) Be independent thinkers, who do not automatically accept decisions.
Kids designated as gifted have long been thought to be more at risk of emotional issues, and to carry some of them into adult life, because of various factors: the National Association for Gifted Children, for instance, identifies "heightened awareness, anxiety, perfectionism, stress, issues with peer relationships, ...
Since gifted people learn quickly in at least one area, those other areas that take a little longer can feel like failure, and be painfully wounding to their self esteem. Many gifted people have a fierce inner critic that may prevent them from trying new things for this reason.
The “syndrome” refers to the long-lasting sequelae of adolescent academic pressure, such as burnout, impostor syndrome and horrendous work habits.
However, empirical research has not demonstrated that anxiety is a greater problem for gifted children than it is for children who are not gifted. In fact, there is empirical evidence that intellectually or academically gifted children experience lower levels of anxiety than their nongifted peers.
ADHD AND GIFTEDNESS are sometimes described as having the same or similar characteristics. However, one diagnosis is considered a disability and one, a gift. Neither assumption is ideal in supporting the child identified with either ADHD, giftedness, or both, often referred to as twice exceptional or 2e.
Gifted kids often have advanced intellectual skills that allow them to perform at high levels and solve complex problems. But this intelligence is not always accompanied by high social and emotional skills. Socially and emotionally, gifted kids often develop at the same rate or even slower than their peers.
About 70% of autistic people have an intellectual disability, which means they have an IQ lower than 70. The remaining 30% have intelligence that ranges from average to gifted. Autism and intelligence are two separate characteristics. A person can be autistic with any level of intelligence.
Although IQ represents only a partial expression of giftedness, according to a purely psychometric view, giftedness is defined by an IQ of 130 or higher, placing gifted individuals at least two standard deviations above the population mean.
Social development and skills: gifted and talented children
Gifted children can think faster and/or more deeply than other children their age. So they're often good at imagining what it's like to be in somebody else's situation. Sometimes these qualities mean your gifted and talented child gets along well with others.
Empathy for others is a common hallmark of many gifted children. They may have an unusual sensitivity for the emotional distress of their friends and an unusual ability to help them resolve their emotional conflicts.
It is extremely difficult to find someone who truly gets you in this world when you are gifted or twice exceptional. Rarely finding someone with whom you can relate or who makes you feel understood, inevitably leads to loneliness. If you are identified as gifted you have a cohort of roughly 2% of the population.
Self-Identity. Most gifted persons grow up not knowing they are gifted until identified in later years at school or through the person pursuing answers as to why they feel different in their lives or careers.
Gifted children can be argumentative and/or manipulative. Even though a child might be able to present a logical or convincing argument, they still need boundaries and discipline around their behaviour else they learn that these undesirable behaviours get them what they want.
Intellectual complexity goes hand in hand with emotional depth. Just as gifted children's thinking is more complex and has more depth than other children's, so too are their emotions more complex and more intense.
Anxiety among gifted students is controversial. Some studies showed that gifted children had lower anxiety scores than their non-gifted peers (15,16). For example, Guignard et al., (9) reported that gifted children display higher anxiety only when they did not have more perfectionism than their peers.