I'm 18 and since 3rd grade I was in a special class for gifted children. I know this feeling so well, from my experience and from those of my classmates and friends, it literally hurts.
I'm no psychiatrist but from my nonobjective personal experience depression in gifted children and your regular "normal" teenage depression are completely different, in symptoms as well as in cause, which I think the article illustrates nicely.
I think the people criticizing the article for focusing on children and on gifted children specifically don't understand it's a whole different world. There are whole fields of study in psychology, psychiatry, education studies and other fields that focus on gifted children because they need a completely different system to thrive. People, especially family and educators, need to know about this.
Just don't get too used to thinking being gifted is particularly rare and requires a different system to thrive. Many acquaintances of mine at a certain crimson ivy university grew up with similar notions, and got into a different kind of depression once being surrounded by other 'gifted' individuals - due to having the 'world view' they've internalized so far, around the notion of them being special, getting totally crushed. Many also got used to explaining away their flaws as somehow being related to them being brilliant. This notion of specialness being crushed, they also saw those thing for what they are - failings, i.e. that they fail to connect with young people their age due to poor social skills, and not due to them gifts; and this becomes obvious now that others around them are also smart, etc. They realized that even if you're 1/1000 this means Facebook could staff the entire company with even more gifted Americans, and you'd still not make it, and so on.
These people are also crushed to learn upon graduation that people don't automatically revel in their obvious greatness, and that they need to earn their place by actually delivering / 'executing' on some of that potential.
TL;DR: Smart teenagers tend to not realize they are still 99% teenager, 1% smart. That itself is a teenager like habit.
Humans have roughly similar meta-emotional makeups and thrive in environments that cater to this. Gifted or not, children and teenagers thrive where they can expand their social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual boundaries and capabilities in a trusting, safe, encouraging environment. Thus the 'system' is the same, the gifted merely require a different mix of 'content'. They may be advanced in certain ways but normal or behind in others.
I agree that the system makes us think we're a special little snowflake and I've had the whole "I'm not that special" crushing experience, but I do truly believe that gifted children need a different environment to thrive. I wouldn't have lasted long among my peers, socially and academically.
No doubt, but unfortunately it's probably not as simple as placing the 'gifted' ones in one room and the 'ungifted' ones in another. Surely its a spectrum?
Unfortunately, people don't learn that kind of thing from reading (or being told).
Maybe we shouldn't delay the real world lessons of "there are plenty of people better than you, just in different ways" and "yeah you are great, you'll still have to earn it" until they grow up. In my view, that's another one of the failures of modern schools.
Since you're still 18, I'll give you the advice I wish someone had told me 13 years ago:
You are not a head in a body. Your mind is intertwined with your body and your body is what connects you to reality. Keep in touch with your body.
It's easy for you to focus on things to the exclusion of everything else and it's very easy to forget about your body. Don't.
I'm fairly sure that's also why the article mentioned hugging. Just let your canary in the coal mine be that if you no longer enjoy physical touch; you're out of contact with your body.
I blame Descartes and his mind/body dualism for much of the "brain-centric" view of consciousness :)
The human organism needs lots of physical exercise, movement, breathing, stretching, etc. to function properly. Along with proper sleep habits, your body's environment must be taken care of if you expect to feel "good" and expect proper brain functioning.
The most demanding cognitive activities require support of all the rest of the body's systems (mood, temperament, stamina) which can be kept in shape through proper physical conditioning and nutrition.
I wish I became of this earlier as well! Great point. Somewhere in high school I lost touch with this, and it took a lot of effort in my twenties to consciously realize this & bring it to my life.
I was diagnosed as "gifted" in third grade, but switched back into "regular" school in sixth grade in response to bullying, a short temper, and a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome with Seasonal Affective Disorder.
I think the only reason I got through high school was because of the immense amount of support I got when I was placed in a partially self-contained class with roughly ten other students with Asperger Syndrome and Autism.
The thing that always bothered me (and my "gifted" classmates) is that lumping all such children together is a Bad Idea(TM). We had unique strengths and weaknesses, and having us march in lock-step in a traditional Prussian-style school at double speed just made our weaknesses that much more apparent.
I'm 18 and since 3rd grade I was in a special class for gifted children. I know this feeling so well, from my experience and from those of my classmates and friends, it literally hurts.
I'm no psychiatrist but from my nonobjective personal experience depression in gifted children and your regular "normal" teenage depression are completely different, in symptoms as well as in cause, which I think the article illustrates nicely.
I think the people criticizing the article for focusing on children and on gifted children specifically don't understand it's a whole different world. There are whole fields of study in psychology, psychiatry, education studies and other fields that focus on gifted children because they need a completely different system to thrive. People, especially family and educators, need to know about this.