Product Description

Our brightest, most creative children and adults are often being misdiagnosed with behavioral and emotional disorders such as ADHD, Oppositional-Defiant Disorder, Bipolar, OCD, or Asperger’s. Many receive unneeded medication and inappropriate counseling as a result.

Physicians, psychologist, and counselors are unaware of characteristics of gifted children and adults that mimic pathological diagnoses. Six nationally prominent health care professionals describe ways parents and professionals can distinguish between gifted behaviors and pathological behaviors.

Features include a Foreword by Ronald E. Fox, Psy.D., Ph.D., Past President of the American Psychological Association, and:

• Written for parents and professionals • Characteristics of gifted children and adults • Diagnoses most commonly given to gifted children and adults • Traits of diagnoses incorrectly given to gifted children and adults • Guidelines to avoid mislabeling gifted children • Parent-child relationship problems • Issues for gifted adults • Advice for selecting a counselor or health care professional

"Misdiagnosis and Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults" has been endorsed by three past presidents of the American Psychological Association, two neurologists, and two family practice physicians.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #97253 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 265 pages

Review
"!!!!!Must Read" -- Today's Books, December, 2004

"I recommend this book to all parents, teachers, and professionals who interact with gifted children and their families." -- Drake D. Duane, M.D., Director, Institute of Behavioral Neurology; Past-President, International Academy for Research in Learning Disabilities; Past Chairman, Scientific Advisory Board, The Dyslexia Foundation

"Makes a powerful statement... I highly recommend this book to both professionals and parents." -- Nicholas Colangelo, Ph.D., Professor of Gifted Education and Director, Belin-Blank Center, The University of Iowa

"Parents, teachers, physicians, counselors, and therapists, as well as gifted will find a wealth of practical knowledge here." -- Nancy McWilliams, Ph.D., Author, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner's Guide, Professor, Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

"This book clarifies important and relevant characteristics of gifted children and adults... concise, informative, and readable." -- Richard M. Clouse, M.D., F.A.A.F.P., Associate Professor,University of Louisville School of Medicine

"This book is a significant contribution that should greatly reduce the difficulties in making an appropriate diagnosis" -- Tracy L. Cross, Ph.D., George and Frances Ball Distinguished Professor of Gifted Studies, Editor, Roeper Review

"This book is an invaluable resource for professionals and parents... to clarify the often-misunderstood experiences of gifted children and adults." -- Colleen M. Harsin, M.A., M.S.W., Manager of Family Services, Davidson Institute for Talent Development

"This well-organized book describes how giftedness can be confused with some psychiatric disorders, obscure other disorders." -- William H. Smith, Ph.D., ABPP-CL, Former Dean, Karl Menninger School of Psychiatry and Mental Health Sciences

"Valuable resource for parents, teachers, and professionals from both psychological and medical communities. I wish I had it years ago." -- Carolyn Kottmeyer, Hoagies' Gifted Education Page; Hoagies' Kids and Teens Page

"a thorough and compassionate guide to behaviors of gifted children and adults that are sometimes mistaken as psychiatric symptoms" -- Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D., New York

About the Author
The authors, James T. Webb, Ph.D., Edwards R. Amend, Psy.D., Nadia E. Webb, Psy.D., Jean Goerss, M.D., Paul Beljan, Psy.D., and F. Rich Olenchak, Ph.D., include the President of the National Association for Gifted Children, two clinical neuropsychologists, two clinical psychologists, and a board-certified pediatrician formerly affiliated with The Mayo Clinic.

Customer Reviews

Helpful book recommended to me by Dept of Education
I found this book to be informative and validating. Our son has been misdiagnosed as ADHD and Aspergers by different professionals taking inputs from us and his teachers. As soon as he was diagnosed with either, we immediately researched and learned all we could. It became clear to us as parents that neither seemed to fit. I even scheduled a private appt with his psychitraist to express my concerns and they dismissed me thinking I was just against him taking meds. Finally after 6 years going through all of this, our son was diagnosed with chronic anxiety and our psychologist recommended we do some reading on working with gifted children because although he had not been 'tested', he said based on working with him for over 1 year, he could see he was a gifted child, in particular with use of language, abstract thinking, math and science. It should also be noted that our psychologist is also a former school psychologist.

The Dept of Education recommended this book to me after I had described what we have been through and it read like an autobiography. I read the book in 1 afternoon and ended up reading most of it aloud to my husband in my 'listen to this' moments as he sat shaking his head in agreement and disbelief.

I hope people reading this review understand that having a gifted child is not all sunshine and roses. As one other reviewer wrote, many people mistake giftedness for genius and that is not always the case. Our son is not profoundly gifted, but enough different that he can not interact well with age-peers and suffers anxiety from daily things that most adults can rationalize but that gifted children understand but can not emotionally integrate.

Now he is on the right medication for his anxiety (instead of the wrong medications he was on for ADHD) and in the proper educational programs addressing his needs and he is doing wonderfully.

I have recommended this book to teachers, school counslers and principals in the hopes that they will not be so quick in the future to label children and push for their own diagnoses based on initial behaviors, but instead will spend the time to look deeper for the causes of the behaviors and consider that not every active child that crosses their path is ADHD -- they just might be be experiencing high adreline due to anxiety or frustration in 'learning' about things they already know.

Concerns
I can see why a lot of parents are ready to embrace this book. It is very difficult to accept that your child is not perfect, especially when you can see how bright he or she is.

The problem with Asperger's, in particular, is that it is a wholly observation-based diagnosis at this point. If you have a child that exhibits signs of Asperger's but then you say "Yes, but gifted kids exhibit these signs, too, so my child must be gifted instead," you are picking one arbitrary label over another and possibly denying your child the help that he or she needs.

Many kids with Asperger's have superior functioning in the part of the brain that specializes in logic (usually producing excellence in science, rote memory, mathematics, or music); I would bet anything that the "gifted" children to which this book refers--the ones being confused with kids with Asperger's--are not often gifted in learning languages or gifted at reading comprehension and literary analysis. I would bet they are not amazing creative writers or athletes.

Asperger's is an autism-scale disorder; Tony Atwood explained it to me like this. Let's say that there are 100 elements of Asperger's, and a person must have 50 to be categorized as having the disorder. Not everyone will have the same 50, and some will have only 50 while others will have 60 or 70 or even 90.

Every parent wants to believe their children are exceptional and a label like ADHD or Asperger's contraindicates that for some people. My children have ADHD and Asperger's. And they ARE gifted and exceptional.

I just implore parents who are reading this book not to substitute their opinion based on this book for an expert evaluation. Some of the signs of Asperger's can be subtle; one of my children is an obvious case, for example--didn't make eye contact, has halting speech, flaps his hands, takes everything literally; the other you might have to be around for a week or two to pick up on it, but it is there.

Treatment for ADHD has helped my more obviously affected son tremendously, and if I had read this book before learning more about his diagnoses, I could have been tempted to dismiss his behaviors as evidence of his giftedness.

A Must Read For Those Whose Children Are 'Different'
I just finished reading this book and I am AMAZED that so much of this information applies to my 6 year old son. I had been told that he has Aspberger's by one expert. Now, after being given this book to read by a different expert, I know that he doesn't. It might just be that he is gifted. We have not had him tested as yet, but reading this has taken a huge burden off of my shoulders and has given us a chance to understand why our son is angry and 'different'.

I hope that every parent of a child who has been or is about to be 'labeled' with ADHD or ODD or OCD or Aspberger's reads this book.

I am not a trained psychologist. I consider myself to be somewhat intelligent and I had no problem understanding this book. Give it a shot, even if you feel intimidated by the alphabet soup of doctors and experts on the cover.