Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents: Understanding the Suicidal Mind

by Tracy L. Cross

"Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents" explores the phenomenon of suicide among students with gifts and talents. It provides the reader with a coherent picture of what suicidal behavior is; clarifies what is known and what is unknown about it; shares two major theories of suicide with explanatory power; and offers an emerging model of the suicidal behavior of students with gifts and talents. In addition, the book includes chapters offering insight into the lived experience of students with gifts and talents, what we can do to prevent suicide among gifted students, and resources available to help.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Health, Psychology

114 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 2013

About the author

Tracy L. Cross holds an endowed chair, Jody and Layton Smith Professor of Psychology and Gifted Education, and is the Executive Director of the Center for Gifted Education at William and Mary.

Reviews

[Peacejanz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a comprehensive, very easy to read report on suicide among children. And it is also a ready guide to suicide in general. In fact, as the author notes, the suicide rate and methods vary little among gifted and average children.
Theories of suicide are presented and there are national and state resources listed at the end of the book. This is an excellent book for anyone working with adults or children who have any thoughts or attempts of suicide.
I received a free copy of this book from Goodreads.

[_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would have been improved by a discussion of neurodivergence, which can be correlated with both giftedness and suicide. As it is, the connection between the ideas discussed in this book and their applicability was often unclear.

The assumption seems to be that, aside from the usual risk factors, gifted students are unique in that they may contemplate suicide because they are unpopular or are under pressure to fit in. This seems to be based on anecdotal and outdated ideas of giftedness. Our society is both anti-intellectual and prejudiced against the (intellectually or otherwise) disabled. Being an intellectual or a STEM entrepreneur is increasingly valued, but only as a path to fame and profit. Anti-intellectualism is becoming the territory of conspiracy theorists who believe that they are more, not less, intelligent than the experts. As such, I'm not really sure how much the stereotypical nerds vs. popular kids trope still correlates with intellectual giftedness. I wonder if neurodivergence might be a more useful concept than giftedness, both in the context of this book and elsewhere, but maybe that's just me.

[Robert Bogue]

It’s a concerning question for parents of children who are considered “gifted” intellectually. Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents: Understanding the Suicidal Mind doesn’t answer the question about whether these children are more or less likely to die by suicide. Citing conflicting research, no conclusion is drawn. However, there is work to surface the factors that lead to these conflicting results.

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[Janet Helmcamp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not a person who desires to be inundated with statistics and psychological jargon. Only about two chapters will help inform and change my practice. I was hoping to use this for a book study, now I’m afraid my colleagues will excommunicate me if I choose this book. While there may be someone out there who thrives on data tables, charts, graphs, and vocabulary development surrounding the topic of suicide, this is not what I was expecting.

[✨Bean's Books✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 for the simple fact that I wish it were a bit longer and the concepts and ideas/suggestions were more expanded upon. This book has some amazing points and makes them clearly. However considering the short length of the book, I felt as though I was reading an information pamphlet instead of an actual text on the subject. I personally agree with nearly ALL the points brought up in this book especially in Chapter 8 when it is discussed that the true first line of high school suicide prevention lies within their fellow students. "Students often know before the adults do." 100% true! I love the suggestions given of how to reshape our high schools curriculums to not only teach suicide awareness to students, but also to better tailor said curriculums to be better suited and even more challenging for our gifted students who are at a different level than the majority. One other point this book makes that REALLY stood out to me was changing the stigma of intelligent, gifted children. Instead of putting them down, shunning them or just simply placing them with all the rest out of lack of knowing what to do for them, we should instead be encouraging them and even challenging them to do their very best at each grade level. All-in-all this was a great little read.