Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals
The persistence of memory ( Salvador Dalí, 1931) [The following article was written by James T. Webb on the website of Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted (SNEG) in 2011. Please click here for the original article.] It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression. Although an episode of existential depression may be precipitated in anyone by a major loss or the threat of a loss which highlights the transient nature of life, persons of higher intellectual ability are more prone to experience existential depression spontaneously. Sometimes this existential depression is tied into the positive disintegration experience referred to by Dabrowski (1996). Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence. Yalom (1980) describes four such issues (or “ultimate concerns”)–death, freedom, isolation and me...