“A gifted individual in crisis may exhibit symptoms that seem to fit certain psychiatric syndromes…”
Unfortunately, even in crises, fear of being mis-understood, mis-diagnosed and overmedicated prevent many gifted individuals from seeking psychiatric consultation or taking advantage of the judicious use of psychotropic medication.
Gifted Research and Outreach (GRO) is honored to introduce this seminal article written by Dr. Jerald Grobman, MD. Dr. Grobman has been named a Distinguished Fellow by the American Psychiatric Association and is a prominent private practice psychiatrist who specializes in the assessment and psychotherapy of gifted adolescents and adults. Dr. Grobman is also a member of GROs Advisory Panel.
In this article Dr. Grobman utilizes his 40+ years’ experience working with the gifted population to provide a thoughtful and well-balanced analysis about how giftedness impacts an individual, how to utilize this knowledge to distinguish a gifted individual in crisis from one who has developed a psychiatric syndrome or pathologic personality disorder and how to develop a comprehensive treatment plan with specific, judicious and short-term use of psychotropic medication. The down side risk of developing a chronic crisis when employing self-styled treatments is also described.
