However, intelligence has drawbacks too. For example, studies have found that higher IQ is associated with more and earlier drug use. Studies have also found that higher IQ is associated with more mental illness, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
Gifted children often set very high standards for themselves and get frustrated when they can't meet them. This can sometimes result in tantrums and other difficult behaviour.
nobody else seems to feel like this.” Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority. The medical community tends to see these conflicts as symptoms and labels gifted people neurotic.
At its core, giftedness is a brain-based difference that contributes to our vibrant and neurodiverse world. This neurological difference means that profoundly gifted students experience a different intellectual, academic, and social-emotional development trajectory than neurotypical individuals.
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.
Gifted adolescents have the cognitive capacity to understand the concepts of life, death and other issues, but that does not guarantee competent emotional and social awareness of the matters. They often feel different from their peers as their emotional maturity lags behind their cognitive abilities.
Advanced learning and understanding can lead to anxious thoughts. Gifted kids also may struggle socially and emotionally. 1 As a parent, it is important to understand the unique challenges gifted kids can experience.
Social shyness and awkwardness in new situations are very common with gifted children. Parents need to handle their child's difficulty in new situations by setting up interactions that will not be threatening and giving help when help is needed.
Gifted children are more prone to depression, self-harm, overexcitability, and learning deficits. A gifted student might be so paralyzed by her own perfectionism, say, that she refuses to hand in any assignments.
Gifted trauma stems from childhood issues with feeling like you don't belong anywhere because of your gift. Bullying, starving for mental stimulation, school mismatch, and other issues specific to the life experience of the gifted child may also contribute both to the main mental health issue and gift-specific trauma.
They can have trouble adapting socially.
Being gifted means having different psychosocial needs. Social development and social skills can occur differently in gifted students. Their social interaction with same-age peers may not align well during childhood and adolescence.
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.
Many gifted children will start arguments using “why” questions. This argument usually begins with, “Why do I have to…?” It's important to define these types of arguments for your child at an earlier time for use later. The best time to have a discussion with your gifted child is before you are in a heated moment.
We now know that individuals that fit into these categories not only have their own unique challenges, but they also share many similarities as well. Not only that, but they can occur together. In fact, about 50% of gifted children also have ADHD which adds complexity and additional challenges.
Not all bright children naturally wish to avoid their peers; for many gifted kids, fitting in is a struggle—one that can leave them feeling isolated and vulnerable. A failure to fit in is more than just uncomfortable for gifted children who want to make friends.
The burdens of their outlier status and never quite feeling they belong take their toll. Even though the gifted are no more susceptible to mental illness than anyone else, some gifted children and teens struggle with overthinking, worry, or cautious alertness.
Negative Characteristics of a Gifted Child
Pretentious, shows off, or evokes their classmates: They may humiliate the people around them and show off because they can grasp things very quickly.
Nearly everyone struggles with making friends, but there are a few reasons gifted individuals may appear to struggle with friendships more than others. Gifted kids (and adults) often have different challenges than their typical learner peers.
While some gifted children may have a flair for the dramatic, that does not diminish the intensity of their emotions. These children may be experiencing what psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski called an emotional overexcitability. 2 That means that they actually do experience emotions more intensely than others.
One of the most common sources of frustration for a gifted child, in my experience, has to do with their perception that others' rules don't make sense, aren't logical, and things that others say or do aren't rational (and therefore need not be obeyed).
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.
Studies show that gifted children have a higher risk of experiencing mental health issues, like anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts. Because gifted children have different capabilities than their peers, other children may find them intimidating.
Heightened Sensory Processing
Their “hyper-awareness” of the world around them may increase their physical discomfort to loud noises, scratchy fabrics, or pungent smells, creating anxiety around certain physical stimuli.