Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents: Understanding the Suicidal Mind

By Tracy Cross

The updated second edition of Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents explores the suicidal behavior of 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, and what we can do to prevent suicide among gifted students, including creating caring communities and specific counseling strategies. It also provides a list of resources available to help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Nov 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781618216793

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Several people helped in creating this book. We would like to thank Lindsay Adams for her work, especially on updating the resources, and Natalie Dudnytska for her assistance with the chapter summaries. Thank you also to Lacy Compton for her work editing this book.

We also thank Joel McIntosh for supporting this project, knowing that it would likely appeal to a relatively small readership.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Ben and his family—Roger, Sherry, and Amanda.

Copyright ©2018, Prufrock Press Inc.

Edited by Lacy Compton

Cover and layout design by Allegra Denbo

ISBN-13: 978-1-61821-679-3

No part of this book may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

For more information about our copyright policy or to request reprint permissions, visit http://www.prufrock.com/permissions.

At the time of this book’s publication, all facts and figures cited are the most current available. All telephone numbers, addresses, and website URLs are accurate and active. All publications, organizations, websites, and other resources exist as described in the book, and all have been verified. The author and Prufrock Press Inc. make no warranty or guarantee concerning the information and materials given out by organizations or content found at websites, and we are not responsible for any changes that occur after this book’s publication. If you find an error, please contact Prufrock Press Inc.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

PREFACE

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

CHAPTER 2

A Brief History of Completed Suicides

CHAPTER 3

Expanding the Epidemiological Lens From Prevalence Rates to Correlates

CHAPTER 4

Suicide Trajectory Model and Psychache

CHAPTER 5

Research on the Suicidal Behavior of Students With Gifts and Talents

CHAPTER 6

The Personal Experience of Students With Gifts and Talents

CHAPTER 7

Toward a Model of Suicidal Behavior for Students With Gifts and Talents

CHAPTER 8

Preventing Suicide Among Students With Gifts and Talents: A School-Based Approach

CHAPTER 9

Creating a Positive Environment for Students With Gifts and Talents

CHAPTER 10

Mental Health Support for Distressed Students With Gifts and Talents

RESOURCES

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTED READINGS

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION¹

I am pleased to provide a few words regarding Tracy Cross’s unique contribution, Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents. This book provides necessary information regarding the prevalence of the act itself, the risk factors associated with it, and helpful ideas on how schools can attempt to modify or eliminate this scourge.

Dr. Cross points out that Clearly suicide is commonplace, pervasive in our society, and preventable. Because there is a multitude of evidence presented in this volume to verify that statement, we might reflect on why it is so rarely a topic considered in our schools and journals. The myth that suicide is a sudden event that occurs out of nowhere and is unpredictable maintains itself despite its falsity. Can it be that such a belief relieves all of us of responsibility to take action on this devastating problem? We are fortunate that Dr. Cross has collected this impressive data that calls on all of us to pay attention and act.

One of the useful discoveries from the data is the age most at risk. Adolescence appears to be the most vulnerable age, much more so than later college-age students. Apparently, many adolescents have not been able to develop positive coping skills to deal with the depression and social problems often attendant to that age and conclude from their hopelessness that ending things is the only answer.

The greater prevalence of suicide in states with higher rates of gun ownership is an interesting fact. Apparently, access to a reliable tool may be the final factor in the recipe, because guns are much more reliable than poisons or knives to the person who has decided to act upon his or her despair.

The fact that suicide is no more prevalent among students with gifts and talents than among students with average abilities should not be seen as reassuring. In practically all other dimensions, being gifted is associated with positive factors such as greater health, friendships, etc. When such children prove just as vulnerable, that is proof again that it is personal ideation rather than reality that we are dealing with. Such children are as prone to depression and social isolation as other students.

In addition to the inevitable depression and despair among family and friends, we have a sense of loss of their special gifts: the sonata never written, the scientific cure never discovered, the political accomplishments never realized, the brilliant poetry never created. We can ill afford such loss of potential talent.

Cross’s recommendation for schools are well advised. Both formal and informal screening of students should take place to identify early students at risk and to take positive action. Substitute behaviors can be encouraged, and positive behavior supports can be applied. A mental health committee to develop positive plans for individuals may operate similar to the Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) already in force and could be very helpful.

Also, the final section on national and state resources provides a good reference base for those looking for often-hard-to-find sources of information on this topic.

Dr. Cross has done his field, and all those who work in it, a valuable service in producing this volume. I believe it will be a much-quoted source for many years.

James J. Gallagher

University of North Carolina

¹ Dr. James J. Gallagher passed away on January 17, 2014. Because he was such a staunch supporter of our research, with permission, we have included Dr. Gallagher’s foreword from the first edition of the book.

PREFACE

TRACY L. CROSS

Although I have been somewhat aware of suicide since childhood, I have not been preoccupied with it or even particularly focused on it. I suspect that my longstanding interest in music and art have kept me close to people in two arenas wherein suicidal behavior has higher prevalence rates than average (Ludwig, 1995). I have also had numerous friends and acquaintances from the LGBTQ community, another group at higher than average risk for suicidal behavior. The single thread across my life is that I grew up surrounded by gifted and talented people. As I matured, I worried about some of my friends and acquaintances, as, occasionally, one would engage in suicidal ideation or make a suicide attempt. These experiences set the stage for my midcareer focus on the suicidal behavior of students with gifts and talents.

In April of 1994, while I was watching MTV News, I learned of the suicide of the alternative band Nirvana’s singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain. I realized that we had lost an important musician and leader of disenfranchised youth. I feared that there would likely be a pronounced effect on the Cobain followers. For several months prior to Cobain’s death, I had been involved in a yearlong evaluation of a residential high school for intellectually gifted students (Academy). Within a couple of weeks of Cobain’s death, I was contacted by the dean of the college of education that administered the Academy and was apprised that it was prom night and there had been a suicide within the school’s student body. I also learned that the suicide had occurred one block away from the Academy’s campus. I met the dean at the Academy to help, prior to his informing the students what had happened. The dean had the very difficult responsibility of telling the students, during their prom, about the suicide of one of their popular student leaders.

I learned that same evening that a former student of the same school had killed himself a few months before while in a mental health institution. This student had been sent home from the school following a brief period of attendance, after a series of inappropriate behaviors were documented. The student spent a month in a mental health facility, came home for one day, was returned to the mental health facility, and later hanged himself in the facility. The school learned after his death that he had a long history of mental health problems and had made several attempts to kill himself before he attended the Academy. None of this information was shared with the Academy until after his death.

A task force was created by the dean to: (a) conduct a postvention, (b) prevent another suicide, and, (c) study the suicides at the school. A postvention is a plan to enter an environment after a tragedy or crisis and help ease the pain of those in the environment. Services were provided to students, families, and some faculty and staff after determining the extent to which individual community members were at risk. Postventions also attempt to prevent suicide contagion from occurring. To those ends, all students who were designated as at risk were attended to personally and over time. During the following summer months, a third student associated with the school killed himself at his original home high school. His suicidal journal entry is included at the beginning of the first chapter of this book. He was the third student who had attended the Academy for some

Reviews for Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents

[mrstrand-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Academic in nature, but doesn't seem especially helpful for either the clinician or general audiences. This is the kind of work one would start with when attempting to grasp the most basic concepts of a topic before going into deeper research. It fails in one primary function in it's mission which is to answer "So what?" Calls to additional research and more practical information would be a welcome addition for future updates.

[randy_landes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you want to know all the statistics that is out there on suicide prevention and gifted children then this book is for you. It also does a great job of helping the reader understand what those statistic means in reference to treating the gifted who are suicidal. The book identifies schools as the best place for intervention with the gifted as this is where most of the resources are available. The book does a great job of sharing resource that you can access to help your school and community help the gifted. I also liked that the book discussed the mental and emotional development of the gifted. I liked the fact that the author discussed many of the myths about suicide such as the myth that we shouldn’t talk about it with our children. What I think the book is missing is dealing with many school systems lack of apathy toward the gifted and the lack of recognition for the gifted and what they provide for the school community. Having said that I am a little jaded as my son who was gifted and became a National Merit Scholar. This was never even brought up in the school. A plaque was put on the wall but that was it, no ceremony or anything. As a therapist I hear these stories all the time. A football player scores a touch down and it is acknowledged over the intercom and it is celebrated across the entire campus. I wish the book would have discussed more about this as well. I also wished that the author would have provided examples of a good suicide prevention plan that talks about how to develop supports and removing resources that provided opportunity for completion instead of just saying there are resources out there. Overall, I think she did a great job of talking about the mind set of a gifted child, the emotional struggles they face and where to start with help. As this is the second addition others must feel the same way. If you have a struggling gifted child, I recommend this book, but I don’t think it is worth the suggested price on the back of the book.

[john.cooper · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It's hard to know how to review this book, as my first reaction upon reading was that I cannot possibly be among the anticipated readers. I don't work with kids nor am I an academic; I assumed that this book was for all who are interested, and as a mature adult who well remembers being an adolescent who often fervently wished that he were not alive, I thought that might include me. In fact, chapter 10 actually opens by saying that "this book is for the general public" (p. 95). But it is not written for that public. It is explicitly academic, obscure, meandering, and often off-putting when it obviously aspires to be inclusive. I had hoped that this book might be a rare and helpful guide for those in a position to help a suicidal teen. Case in point: After opening with a few pages of by-the-numbers prefaces, an introduction starts off readably enough, and introduces in broad strokes the relationship between suicideal ideation (thoughts and feelings), attempts, and completions. Chapter 2, however, goes immediately and deeply into the land of statistics, including no fewer than eight more or less comprehensive tables detailing the rates of suicide in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, suicides from 1999 to 2014 enumerated by age categories from 5 to over 85, how the rate of suicide has changed since 1950, methods used, methods broken down by gender, and so on and so on. The text merely explains the tables, like a dull presenter annotating a PowerPoint presentation. This material should have been in an appendix instead of placed at the front of the book. It does nothing to address the needs of readers who came to this book because they have an urgent need to know how to deal with suicides or potential suicides at their home or school. In this chapter, a pattern is set in which absurdly dry academic speak ("Given that rates are established in age bands [i.e., 5-14, 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75-84, 85+], analyzing the particular prevalence rate by age can be considered historically and comparatively"), alternates with plain sentences of frustrating banality ("As this summary of the available data indicates, completed suicides are a reality of modern society.") The authors seem to realize that the best way to underscore a point can be to revert to plain language. But even then, they sometimes can't seem to avoid academic mannerisms: "When in doubt, do something (Cross et al., 1996)!"Chapter 3 is titled "Expanding the Epidemiological Lens from Prevalence Rates to Correlates." This in a book that purports to be for general readers.Middle chapters attempt to examine the risk factors that are associated with adolescent suicide and the particular personal challenges that may be faced by gifted students. Unfortunately, many of the risk factors, such as use of drugs, history of negative experiences at school, feelings of alienation, and similar categories are almost universal among teenagers. This book may be of some help to those who are able to read selectively and skim over what they do not need. Each chapter, very appropriately, ends with a list of "key points" in plain language that help underline whatever point the chapter tried to make. (Unfortunately, many of the key points are pointless ["Suicide is an intentional act of ending one's own life"] of no interest to anyone not undertaking an academic examination of suicide ["Suicide ideation is a qualitatively different phenomenon among diverse age groups"].) A list of national and local resources in the back may also be helpful in a fix.I don't doubt the concern and good intentions of the authors. But they should consider writing a book that can really serve as a helpful guide to educators and parents concerned and confused about how to prevent actual suicides that may occur.

[waltzmn · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I've needed a good book on this topic all my life. Now, dear publisher, drop this one and get someone to write it.I don't know when I first experienced suicide ideation -- but it was certainly in elementary school. The people I hang around with are very bright and very troubled -- I don't have a suicide attempt count, but I believe one of them has been in the hospital five times. And she is not the only one. I know very well the link between high academic skills and suicide.Fortunately, I never had to work with anyone using this as a guide. Have these authors ever met someone who is suicidal? For that matter, have they ever met a gifted student?Oh, and by the way, Drs. Cross, have you ever heard of autism?That is not an idle question. A solid study shows that the suicide rate among high-IQ people with autism is nine time that population average. A slightly less rigorous but still pretty good study shows that the rate of suicide ideation is thirty to sixty times higher than the general population. And while people with autism are not necessarily intellectually gifted (forget TV shows like "Atypical" and "The Good Doctor"; the average IQ is about the same as the general population), enough of them are extremely smart as to make them a substantial fraction of those labelled "gifted." A book about suicide among the young which does not mention autism is about like a book on World War II that doesn't mention Japanese imperialism, Fascism, or Hitler.On page 42, for instance, they give four reasons of why gifted students consider suicide. Every one of their four reasons is closely associated with autism; two are so strongly associated that they can be used toward a diagnosis.OK, so let's re-title the book Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents Who Don't Have Autism, Assuming You Can Find Any, Which You Probably Can't. Does that make it better?I really don't think so. It's a short book, but it still manages to fall into several distinct parts that don't fit together. It starts with a study of suicide in general (it calls it a "history," but it isn't; it's an epidemiological examination). This has nothing to do with the gifted and talented, but it would probably be useful -- if you could trust it. I found that I couldn't. Errors ranged from the minor (p. 34, parents of the suicidal suffer from psychopathology, not, as the text says, psychopathy, which is when the parents have no willingness to follow the norms of society) to the baffling (the table of suicide rates by region on page 9 gives figures that can't possible average out to the alleged average; rates of suicide contemplation on p. 17 show fluctuations that are almost beyond belief). Maybe the data is right, but all those insane numbers need justification.On page 35, we finally get case studies.Three of them.The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." And the case studies don't even give any real insight; they don't offer long interviews or journal entries or any actual insight into the mind of the person who died. (Maybe they were afraid of what those people would say about incompetent therapists?)The next section is about the theories of suicidality. So, for instance, page 36: "Schneiderman's (1993) theory asserted that suicide attempts come from the desire on the part of the person to escape intolerable psychological pain." Yes, and the sky is blue, and the sun sets in the west, and anyone too stupid to know that is too stupid to be trying to help gifted children! Oy. Once again, the authors show no sign of ever having talked to anyone who experiences an urge to suicide.With chapter 8 (p. 73), we finally get to techniques for presenting suicide. At least, that's what the chapter is called. But it doesn't offer techniques; it just mentions some models that have been implemented somewhere, without any real empirical evidence that they work. And it doesn't have much connection with the theories of suicide that went before it, so what do the theories matter?On p. 89, they offer a model for emotional support. It's from 1963. In psychological terms, that's pre-civilization -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association hadn't yet reached its third edition, which was the first one based on science. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy didn't exist yet. Most practitioners were still Freudians. Freudians do more harm than good in cases like this. (I know from experience. There is also empirical data.)I've ranted on too long. You can clearly tell that I think this a very bad, ill-informed book. This is a very important topic -- our gifted children are the people who will have to get us out of the messes our society is currently making of itself, and the last thing we need is for them to destroy themselves. Schools are very important in this regard -- they see the students regularly, and they don't look at the children with the sometimes-blind eyes of parents. We need books like this one. (Which is why I requested the book.) But we need books that can actually help parents and counselors and teachers understand their student's problems. This reads like it was written by a non-human.

[sumisbooks · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.