SENGinar: Gifted Adults and Trauma

Gifted adults present unique, diverse and complex combinations of cognitive functioning, emotional processing and behavior in therapeutic settings. All too often, mental health professionals have little to no training in identifying or treating gifted clients. Among gifted adults, misdiagnosis and dual diagnosis are more common because the presentation of symptoms may differ for this subpopulation from the general population, despite the same psychopathology. In the area of trauma, diagnosing and treatment planning for gifted adults brings forth another layer of complexity as the gifted child and the gifted adult does not experience trauma in the same way as their peers. 

In fact, their ability to thrive after trauma, in terms of schooling and professional development, may mask the functional impairment that results from post-traumatic stress disorder or other trauma-related disorders. In this presentation, we will explore the concept of resilience as it relates to giftedness and trauma exposure, with a…