Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children and Adults

By James T. Webb, Edward R. Amend, Nadia E. Webb, Jean Goerss, Paul Belian, Richard Olenchak

This book is a very interesting book about the subject of intellectual giftedness. It is about how gifted people often get misdiagnosed with disorders such as Bipolar, AD/HD, Asperger's, and Obsessive Compulsive. It also mentions how gifted people can have these disorders along with their giftedness. Psychologists are realizing now that gifted traits can mimic certain disorders because of the overexcitabilities and drive of people of high intelligence. Gifted individuals with learning disabilities and other psychiatric disorders are known as "twice exceptional" and they are a challenging group of people to understand.

I have noticed that many children are diagnosed with ADD or ADHD and and many other disorders. They are being put on drugs like Ritalin at a high rate. Many of these children are very bright kids. I wonder how many of them really neeed that medication. History has many geniuses who were terrible students. Benajamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein and others like them did poorly in grade school because they resisted authority and daydreamed a lot. Yet they were geniuses.

It is interesting that many characteristics of giftedness mimic AD/HD.



Some characteristics of AD/HD:

Poor attention span

Restlessness, changes activities often, hyperactivity

Dislikes mundane activities

Impulsive

May appear inattentive to details



Some characteristics of gifted students who are bored:

Daydreaming when bored

Bored when tasks are considered mundane or irrelevant

Begin many projects and then don't complete them

High activity level, may need less sleep

Resist authority



I found it interesting that those characteristics overlap so much. It must be true that many people with the AD/HD are actually gifted students that are bored with school because they are not being challenged enough.



Intellectual giftedness creates a drive within people to persue things they find interesting. There are also overexcitabilities such as heightened emotions, more sensitivity to light and touch, and sensitivity to criticism. Those issues have caused some to be misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and Asperger's Syndrome.



When people are thought to have certain disorders, they need a full assessment to make sure that they actually have the disorder. They also need to have an evaluation on how they perform in various settings. If the person does need special treatment for a disorder, it shouldn't be overlooked. We can't say giftedness is a reason for things either, unless we are sure that it's there.