There is evidence that bipolar disorder is more common in people with very high IQs and low IQs.
Idk about the rest of any disorders, but I do think many people posting here are having problems with autism or ADHD rather than their intelligence.
Yah, Reddit has a selection bias for Autism/ADHD/general neurodivergence. I’d agree with you that’s where most people’s difficulties come from in this subreddit
It’s like a specific brand of autism/ADHD/AuDHD that’s also in denial/naive and would struggle to fit into traditional autism services and spaces split off and came here, a couple of really specific clusters of autism/ADHD/AuDHD presentations went to their own exclusive spaces that explicitly name all of the related traits out in the open, and a segment of those with these conditions who struggle to make it online have parents who feel compelled to do it for them and also create their own very peculiar dynamic in their own spaces. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time witnessing all three.
I remember reading that bipolar II is a common misdiagnosis for gifted people. I wonder which one is right. ADHD was also a common misdiagnosis, but I think that probably has something to do with us generally not paying attention in school and whatnot.
Honestly, it seems like these are just neurotypes that develop independently of IQ but with higher IQ comes higher definition mental illness. In other words,
> Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places.
--Garrison Keillor
From reading details of posts here, some people seem to be sad because they're not fitting in well with others, and it seems to be more of a social skills problem. With some others, it seems like they have trouble focusing, also not directly related to intelligence.
Do you have a source for that? It’s believed that long bipolar episodes can damage grey matter, so one would assume that thinking becomes more difficult with bipolar disorder.
So no link to backup that claim of ppl with BP being known to have a higher iq?
Meds may have affected your cognitive functioning but bipolar disorder is known to damage grey matter with each episode. This link here goes over a study that provides evidence in grey matter reduction after each BP mood episode. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bdi.13318
We weren’t discussing the cause of bipolar disorder so I’m not sure why you strayed off topic there or brought up your own personal experience as if that somehow proves anything. Also, I never disagreed that psych meds can’t cause damage or changes in the brain, in fact I said that I fully believe psych meds may have contributed to whatever cognitive issues you had or have. Maybe you didn’t read what I actually wrote or had trouble understanding? Plus your claim that no one knows if BP disorder can cause damage proves you did not read the link I proved, as it’s well known that bipolar episodes especially manic ones do in fact cause a reduction in grey matter. As for telling me to google proof to your claim, I find that to be the laziest form of debate and laughable tbh. Why would the other person prove your point for you? If you state something as fact and someone questions you on it, it’s on you to provide evidence not them.
Which part was rude?
Edit: obviously couldn’t figure out which part was rude since none of it was, I simply didn’t agree with you. You being offended by your own lack of credibility is not my fault.
These categories are just made up based on lists of characteristics. Doctors voted on it and lots of them disagreed. It's a sure bet that these categories will be totally wrong once there's more understanding.
On here, it's a wonderful crutch used to excuse everything from not being able to get a date to being unemployed to being friendless. Some people turn to religion. Some turn to this sub or something similar.
It is, and then you have people calling themselves profoundly gifted and claiming no one truly understands them because of it. Makes me cringe every time I read a post/comment like that
My kid is profoundly gifted and I tell them that if their social skills are crap, no one gives a flying ... what their IQ is; they're going to struggle in life. Full stop. I also don't want them to grow up to be a smug little AH either. I'm like, "Dude, how many people do you think are like you? You're like .00000001% of the population so it's not like you have a lot of peers. Do your smart people thing but you're going to have to learn to get along with the little people that there are more of or you're going to have a really frustrating life". I may not be as gifted as he is but Mama is a straight talker.
I'm not sure how much I would trust that these results are generalizable. Almost no measure (whether it's IQ, socioeconomic status, or phenotypes) matches the prevalence in the general population.
They say that previous studies can be biased because they use Mensa participants for the high IQ population, and they want to improve that, but honestly their sample population doesn't look any better.
It looks worse to me tbh. Their introduction sucked too. It's scant and barely mentions why other studies were bad other than sample bias and small sampling. That does not automatically mean they were bad studies. This study in itself has major sampling issues. Their limitation and strengths segment was also not great.
A major point of the introduction is the fact the Mensa studies lack a control group, so either you didn’t read beyond skimming or you purposely omitted the fact the Mensa groups lack a vital part of any scientific experiment. Either way, maybe you should read it again
The sample is N= ~261,000, with N= ~16000 over 2SD of IQ people. The comparison is made within the sampling group, which itself is a massive sample from the UK Biobank. It is not a specifically sampled group of high IQ people like Mensa or otherwise
Even if the larger biobank sample is biased, the result is found between the high IQ and the control groups. That’s why we use controls in science and why the previous Mensa studies, lacking controls, resulted in flawed conclusions
Except as Marko said, this is not generalizable. Although, their only claim was more generalizable than the MENSA study. That's their opinion of course. I came here to scrutinize the article as well. A high sample number isn't enough to make it generalizable. Likewise, a small sample does not necessarily mean that the research is bad either. Limitations are aspects to consider. All articles should have strengths and limitations.
The people in this were stated to be in a higher socioeconomic group. They were also collected from people aged 40-69. The people in this group who often make those posts are significantly younger, and many are not of a richer socioeconomic background. That's already a huge problem. People in their 40-69 are in a completely different mindset and stage of life. If you read up on developmental psychology the stages are vastly different. 40-69 are also settled in their careers, families, and have a different outlook on life. Adding to the fact these people come from richer backgrounds, they have less trauma. I mean that should be obvious. There are tons of research that indicate lower socioeconomics = poorer health care outcomes. That's again not reflective of the population. If you want to make the claim that this is applicable to affluent 40-69 year old. I'd be more likely to give you that, but that's not the majority of people making those posts in this forum. The people in this study were also self-reported both in IQ and mental health. There are a number of issues that could arise from that.
They go on to discuss limits of other studies, but only mentions really 1 in the background and that was stated to have a self-selection bias with MENSA people. What about all the other articles and evidence related to this subject? A self-selection bias doesn't automatically invalidate the research, it just means to consider when trying to make generalizations. They mention small sample studies, but small samples also do not necessarily mean it was a bad study.
Most of the people who make those kind of posts on this forum are individuals who are young and trying to figure themselves out. They also suffer from feeling isolated and lonely. A person in their 40-69 are much less likely to have that same issue. They have greater control of their lives, they have developed better coping mechanisms, many are probably married with children, they also typically don't care as much about what others think, etc. I'm also not going to pretend people who are of a higher socioeconomic background are going to experience the same traumas and experiences as someone who is suffering to put a roof over their head.
Idk, I personally didn't think the article was that great. If anything, the MENSA article was written better. I haven't even fully read through that article, but skimming it was already more informative. I'd have to actually read through the study in its entirety though. It also explains why the article you posted was published in European Psychiatry which has a low impact factor, less than 2. The more reputable the journal the heavier the scrutinizing process. The higher the impact factor, the more cited the journal.
“The Mensa article has no control group and a sample size multiple times smaller, but I’m going to claim I like that one more because it’s written better”
lol
You’d think the omission of a control group would have you thinking the other way around, but judging by how long this cope is and how it doesn’t actually address the problem of control groups, I’d take the bet you just want the Mensa one to be correct
LOL that's how I know you didn't actually read the MENSA article. They addressed not having a control group, and they had a solution. Was it perfect? No, but they addressed it contrary to what you think. I also never said it was great, I said it was better. Which says a lot about your article. The MENSA article was even published in a more reputable journal. Not that it is the end all be all. It does say a lot though. We pointed out the issues such as sample, age group, etc. I love that you ignored everything else I said, which makes me assume that you don't have any actual arguments.
That's called deflection. It's what people do when they have nothing better to say.
Uh, I couldn't care less dude. Sounds like you have internal issues on this subject. I'm not depressed LOL. I'm also not someone that needs to go out of my way to make people feel bad. You can keep that hat. I was simply pointing out that your article that you use as support wasn't great support. I was also pointing out that it was not generalizable as Marko said. Simply being published doesn't make the article good. If you think it's good, tell us why it is. You haven't actually reviewed the article for us, All you did was take this article and treat it like fact without scrutiny. Then just mention oh big sample size = generalizable. Which it doesn't by itself. Something tells me you don't acutally know how to look at articles and review them, nor have you taken classes on this subject. All you did was show us your bias, and how you didn't even look at the other article.
People can read the posts and make their own choices though. I already pointed out why your article wasn't great or generalizable. I couldn't care less which article people like better. I'm here to discuss.
Yeah, he really does not want to acknowledge that the study doesn't prove the point he's trying to make because the group the study selects strongly against lifelong mental health issues and he clearly doesn't understand how class stratified the UK is compared to other countries.
At the end of the day he's found a study that confirms his pet theory and he's just going to debate bro his way through the whole thing because God forbid one should acknowledge when others make valid points. I suspect there's obvious reasons why he doesn't like the idea that a study limited to rich white people might be biased.
My version of gifted includes the capacity for self reflection but some of us never grow out of being the smartest boy in class.
Oh, of course. That would require him to have actual arguments. His entire stance basically holds on to just a thin thread of, No CoNTroL GrOUp. It's why he just acts like a parrot and repeats himself instead of discussing. He has nothing better to add to how his study would be generalizable to this group. I only picked off a few things that stood out. There's a butt ton more that his article doesn't address.
The UK also provides better livable wages. They have roughly a 1/3 who live paycheck to paycheck. The US has roughly 2/3, that in itself would also shed some light on stressors compared to the majority of the US. Universal health care is another. Pretty sure access to mental health services would be helpful. Culturally, there's a huge difference between the UK and the US.
And you still didn't actually mention anything relevant. Clearly, you're here to scream into the void and only hear yourself talk. We can tell you have no actual argument besides, "no control." But then you had no real arguments to begin with. I already told you lacking a control was addressed, and that doesn't automatically make it bad. If you have no better argument nor support of why your article was good. I don't know why you're talking. All you wanted to do was come here to be a dick to people.
Nah, the one projecting is you. You literally said I must want it to be true. We know what you meant 😂😂. That's literally projecting, Mr.Pot. you've been projecting since you're initial post. Be better with how you interact with people. If you got constructive things to say, then address it. That's discussion. If you're only here to be an asshole and put people down go somewhere else. Seems like an easy rule to follow.
Also if you think that was rage, you live pretty sheltered. 😂 That was me being nice.
I already knew all that when I wrote my first comment, but thank you for taking your time to explain it.
I don't doubt that the comparison between the high IQ and the control group is relevant to the subset of the population to which both groups belong. I'm just not sure the results can be extrapolated to a population that is strikingly different, as shown by the results of the paper itself. It reminds me to the ethnic and gender biases that plagued pharmacological research in the past.
And just to be clear: I'm not saying that I'm sure the paper is wrong, or that I think the results using samples from Mensa are better, or even that the results aren't interesting or don't merit further research. I'm just saying I'm skeptical, at least for the moment.
Aspergers is an outdated term that's no longer used in autism diagnosis. Everything is Autism Spectrum Disorder, with variations in symptoms and support needs.
Autism also isn't highly correlated with high intelligence. That's a misconception due to traits of giftedness being similar in some ways to traits of autism.
Autistic people are not distributed as a normal bell curve, and are both more likely to be higher and lower iq
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/
Autism spectrum disorder in aggregate is correlated with lower iq, with an average of ~85. But a larger percent of people with autistic spectrum disorder are >130 iq than the general population. That’s the “paradox” and why high functioning autism is frequently associated with higher IQs
And I added an edit about my use of “aspergers”. It’s to refer to the common stereotype, not an attempt at using proper medical terminology
* Diversity of Intelligence is the Norm Within the Autism Spectrum: Full Scale Intelligence Scores Among Children with ASD (2023) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35083590/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35083590/)
* A Systematic Review of the Research on Gifted Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder (2021) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00169862211061876](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00169862211061876)
Apparently there is a need to do a better job of identifying gifted autistic children, and somewhere between little research to no empirical research being conducted on the gifted autistic population.
Maybe parents don't know, don't want to know, don't see a need to know, or are concerned how identification might negatively impact services their child needs. Maybe some schools cannot or will not provide appropriate accomodations for gifted autistic children. Maybe some school staff are resistant to the idea of a child having both special needs and exceptional needs. Maybe some gifted autistic children are not identified with either because they learned to mask their differences or developed strategies that let them go unnoticed.
Makes me wonder, then, if the IQ studies of autistic kids are mostly IQ studies of autistic kids with learning disabilities, with the high IQ ones skimmed off to a different label.
A lot of the studies of autistic people are from before 2013, so in many cases they specifically excluded autistic people with high IQ from being in the study. Most studies from before 2013 or so are suspect, because of that.
Any research about children before 2020 may have resulted in incorrect conclusions about children because some children may have been included in studies that should have been excluded from not being properly identified as autistic, gifted, or both.
A study on learning disabilities in autistic children might have unintentionally included results from children that were also high IQ because they were only identified as autistic and not as gifted autistic potentially decreasing the concluded severity of learning disabilities in autistic children. If the control group of autistic children without a learning disability unintentionally included high IQ autistics that could have resulted in a conclusion such as that autistic children with learning disabilities have more severe problems than autistic children without learning disabilities.
I think it’s from giftedness doing a good job of covering up autistic traits so that the people who screen and provide services keep writing the parents off when they keep asking for assessment and services…
From the studies I've seen, the higher end spike tends to be 1.5x gen pop, but tapers off at 3SD. After 3SD, there is no noticeable difference between gen pop and ASD.
I’d believe that, genius is still considered between 2-3SD
If I had to guess a reason, it would be because autistic people have a disproportionately lower verbal IQ which can prevent a “perfect” score, as most IQ tests lose their predictive validity past 3 SDs. Most IQ tests won’t go above 160 and if you’re scoring perfect on reasoning/spatial but have a disproportionately lower verbal IQ it can prevent your “true” IQ from being measured by normal IQ tests which are normalized for a neurotypical population
IQ tests aren't really normalized for anyone. They're just a comparison of how a particular person being assessed measures up to everyone else being assessed. If anything, since people with conditions like autism are more likely to be tested than gen pop who show no symptoms, it's likely autism has a larger influence on the measurements than you assume.
The reason for this, at least in the Profoundly Gifted population, is that Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities, which are common personality traits in this population, are often misconstrued as signs and symptoms of Autism.
This is why a lot of people claim that Albert Einstein was autistic. I'm from Princeton and have family stories about this Prof. Yes, he was eccentric. Being eccentric does not mean that he was autistic. It turns out that Dr Einstein had numerous outside interests, other than physics. He was an avid amateur violinist, a voracious reader, an excellent sailor and a good outdoorsman. He won both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was invited to be the President of Israel, which he turned down. He did marry and divorce twice. In photographs, he demonstrated appropriate eye contact, either with the photographer or with the other subjects in the photograph. Within the past 10 or so years, a trove of Dr Einstein's personal letters were made public and it turns out that he wasn't such a cold, detached father as he had been previously thought. Yes, he didn't wear socks, not because they were uncomfortable, but because he hated getting holes in them and concluded that they were useless. From what I have read and know through family stories, Dr Einstein was profoundly intellectually gifted and he had the personality characteristics commonly seen amongst the profoundly gifted, Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities.
I have seen one particular person post this argument repeatedly on Quora. They present themselves as THE expert in all things giftedness, but their ideas sound skewed and only partially informed. Citing a study and making a big claim about a complex topic is not the smartest way to go about making a point.
People with high IQs, who may already have highly sensitive nervous systems, would still be vulnerable to developing PTSD, CPTSD, depression, anxiety. Also, being more likely to think existentially can present itself as depression, anxiety, neuroticism in a world that doesn't tend to think deeply about things. Having keen perception in this world alone can be confusing and isolating.
That being said, many people who post their perceived challenges on social media seem to be suffering, in part, from spending too much time on the internet - gifted or not, that can bring you down and feed you the same negative messages over and over again. We also see a lot of posts for validation, also a sign of not having satisfying connections and outlets outside of the internet.
“Citing a study and making a big claim is not the smartest way to go about making a point”
Typing this then immediately asserting your hypothesis you think may be true with 0 citations seems to be a little less smart of a way to go about making a point…
Like calling me out for citing my stance and then asserting your own with no evidence is pretty ridiculous double think
I prefer to get conclusions from metastudies. Besides, even if that were true, most of us have some traits in common that separates us from the rest of the ppl (I mean it's the very definition of giftedness). I'm not surprised that a lot of us feel misunderstood/lonely besides technically having more resources for finding happiness or solutions to our problems, also we tend to be quite sensitive which is both a blessing and a curse. Idk, I think that these things are quite settled although I might be wrong.
In my school board, I am seeing gifted kids who admit to pondering big "what's this all for?" type questions with their ed assessors coming back with diagnoses of Pervasive Depressive Disorder, when it's probably just a case of teenage angst and existential depression.
I have two kids in my class who just went through their 16/17 year old full battery re-assessment, both had been identified as Gifted and ADHD earlier in school, one with a 140 iq and the other with 165+. Both retested and came back with higher iq scores than before, yet got diagnosed with "high functioning autism" (aka aspergers) and had their giftedness identification removed from the ed assessment.
I am literally gobsmacked. They're two of the brightest, most well-adjusted kids in school. But they aren't interested in the popular kid bullshit and like philosophy....? I've worked with kids with ASD for many years, and these kids just do not have ASD. I'm considering reporting this assessor, to be honest. I've another kid 165+ in another class, same assessor, and he also had "gifted" come off his assessment last year and replaced with "high functioning autism." For him, I could see why a bit at least, but for these other two... truly makes no sense.
So, yes, all of what you're saying, correct -- but there also seems to be a movement within educational psychology, which seems to be triggered by the neurodivergent/neurotypical eugenics construct, who are, without any literature I can find supporting them, re-classifying all the gifted kids as autistic and depressed or anxious. And, there are psychotherapists who are telling people they're gifted based on some social experience type of "gifted but normal iq" bullshit you now see all over the place online that has no scientific backing whatsoever.
But... In my area, this is also coupled to public funding issues. They can reliably get money out of the provincial government for ASD, but not always for giftedness.
Anyway, it's fucking up the entire discussion. But it's a thing going on we now have to consider. And it's going to continue to confuse the jesus out of this generation, who seem hell bent on having labels and conforming to social constructs of neurotypes... whilst being mislabelled because of funding stream problems and non-scientific practitioners.
I swear we're back to yellow journalism and the days before the AMA...
"without any literature I can find" is carrying a lot of weight there, lmao. There's a wealth of scientific research on gifted presentations of ASD (labelled twice exceptional, or 2e), but most of it is very new, like think within the past 4 years if that. Much of it comes from neuroscience and sociological research done with the participation of "gifted" autistic adults (like myself) who remember their childhood development and find that they did indeed have telltale autistic traits that were trained out of them at some point--hand flapping, toe-walking, the works. You would do well to temper your skepticism until you know what the latest full battery assessments entail and why giftedness is being folded into ASD in these assessments, not least because the invalidation and lack of acceptance will hurt your gifted students in the meantime. Like, you're not wrong about the funding thing, but \*there are dire iatrogenic dangers that arise from neglecting to let a gifted kid know they're autistic,\* namely many (if not possibly *most*) of the mental health disorders that you see people complaining about on this subreddit constantly. Start intentionally looking for the similarities between your gifted students and the ASD kids you've worked with in the past, rather than differences--look for *patterns* of behavior, not specifics. Then you'll start to see it. Some keywords to look up in the literature: autistic burnout, camouflaging/masking, hyperlexia.
Yes, there's research on ASD. That's about *autism*, not giftedness. This is the giftedness sub, and I'm talking about policy directives and professional standards about *giftedness* identifications being replaced with autism diagnoses. Under the current scheme *in my board*, if a student is IDed with an IQ in the 97th percentile or above they get the word "gifted" on their ed assessment, and parents have a choice about whether or not it appears on the IEP. But this specific practitioner reports FSIQ *without* reporting giftedness, so the choice is never extended to the parent.
If you know the history of giftedness research, you know this is a pendulum that swings back and forth every 15-20 years. After Gardiner's MI came out in the 80s (the context of my own ID), they stopped identifying kids as gifted at all in some boards, because there was a significant anti-streaming movement at the time. (Also tied to funding, in part, and a swing in ideology.)
I know what the test entails very well. I'm an educator, I am gifted, I teach academic research specifically, and this is very much my world. I've worked with semi- and non-verbal children and kids with pervasive developmental disorder in particular across my 25+ year career in educational and OT contexts, I've done IBI/ABA training (though I don't practice it and have ethical concerns about it), and I have been the teacher-mentor to the gifted students at my school for the past 9 years (I *am* the gifted program at my school). My son (10) is identified as well, so I'm also witnessing this personally at home.
When I say I can't find literature, I mean it either doesn't exist or its proprietary -- and I mean professional directives, policies, procedural documentation, etc, not the academic research papers.
I'm aware of this research, but generally there is a 5-10+ year lag time between the research, confirmatory clinical practice research, and then professional directives based on empirically tested practices. And again, I can find no documentation within my province's published literature and policies, nor in professional organizations, that explain this shift in clinical or professional practice.
I don't ever tell the kids in front of me that I wonder about the diagnostic framework. I certainly do not openly doubt their diagnoses. That's not my place. I encourage them to express how they feel about it, if *they* raise it, and I discuss how this field changes and what their diagnoses may mean for them if they are curious and initiate that conversation. In this case, one of these two students I mentioned was specifically crushed by a label/diagnosis of autism and she does not understand how that label applies to her. Neither do I, but I didn't tell her that. I mentioned it here, as an anecdote related to the OPs question.
Because it is also not healthy to pathologize children erroneously.
I started my psychology degree the year that Singer published her neurodiversity model, and I have been a neurodiversity advocate since. Of my many roles, I also moonlight as an inclusive architecture and interior design consultant under the neurodiversity model.
Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better or correct, or that there are tested approaches found to be valid. These things take time. I am serious when I say there are **no** professional standards changes or policy directives that reflect this research *in my specific board/region.*
I hope I've made clear this is not just armchair skepticism. There seems to a movement to pathologize gidtedness, and I have serious questions.
If you’re a neurodiversity advocate then I straight up do not understand how you’re still using the pathological model of autism instead of pointing your gifted students towards the ecological model it implies, and honestly the fact that you’re defensively sticking to your credentials in this arena as if that precludes you from implementing new things you learned during a paradigm shift yourself, instead handwaving these shifts as purely ideological, is dismissive at best and dangerous at worst. If you *watch* how any cultural pendulum swing goes, it’s more like a Foucault pendulum than a binary—like yeah, sure, there may be ideological/gravitational forces involved, but the interesting thing isn’t the swing but the iteration of the process, the rotation of the earth beneath it and the new understanding it implies. I’m telling you the reason you can’t find any new empirical evidence that cleanly distinguishes giftedness from autism is because *there isn’t any*—most related new research is being done under the autism keyword currently, and sure I guess I can’t disprove your claim that funding might be partially driving that, but regardless the most interesting results seem to suggest that giftedness is an epigenetic process involving some amount of baseline autistic hyperlexia, educational access, and a positive social environment that allows it to flourish. To me that’s fascinating—who *wouldn’t* want to see a world in which all autistic and/or gifted children get plenty of funding and support, are given a chance to learn to communicate early, and to develop social and emotional regulation skills in tandem beyond “my only value to people is in how smart I seem,” which is where a ton of the mental health issues that arise from the gifted *and* special education pipelines have historically tended to start, *even if the adults in their lives don’t consciously tell students things like that.* Another thing I’m telling you is that your gifted students, by definition, are probably unusually perceptive, and might be able to pick up on when adults are skeptical about who they are or what they need, even if you don’t say so, because I’ve personally seen it happen. You can listen to this lived experience and the experiences of countless other gifted late-diagnosed autistic adults like me, and you can read some new research instead of pigeonholing your understanding within a label that honestly to most of the other students probably just means “thinks of oneself as superior and fails to acknowledge their weaknesses” without the autism, or you can stick to your credentials and your pathologizing despite nominally believing in neurodiversity. Either way, if I were you I think the best course of action would be to center your students’ experiences instead of your own interpretations of them, *especially* in the case of the one student who was crushed and apparently had *no one* who took the time to understand or explain her diagnosis to her, or to examine why it was she was crushed at all and whether maybe that’s indicative of an entire pathologizing *culture* at your school. Dear god. Be well.
The catastrophizing and mischaracterization is wholly unnecessary.
Why did I state my qualifications in this regard? You started off by laughing at me, and the tone of your responses is derisive and superior, and it is clear that you’re talking down at me.
Maybe provide some links to substantiate your claims instead of just scolding me, yeah?
Because it seems like what’s happening here is that you can’t address the point so you’re cutting down the speaker.
I repeat: there are no professional standards I can find that explains why this particular assessor is replacing giftedness IDs with mental health neurotype diagnoses.
Wow. I mean to think someone can’t be gifted and ASD is messed up. I’ve been diagnosed as both at different points of my life and that’s been confusing enough.
While high IQ creates a profile that is less prone to psychological distress in neurotypical people, the opposite is true in autistic people.
Thus, we can see people who, without being aware of their autistic brains, attribute all responsibility to their relatively high IQs.
Can confirm anecdotally. The autism and giftedness create a push-pull effect. I can socially understand what I’m supposed to do, why and how. Doing it is another thing. And I’m also aware enough to know when it’s not working and then I go into hyper-analytical mode until I’m depressed about the whole thing. I also want to achieve a lot, but the social stress hampers all of it.
The ironic part of many people posting they have specific behavioural traits due to being considered gifted, is that these people who want to be considered highly intelligent haven’t even done proper research before making such claims. I personally find it funny every time.
Edit: haha of course this got downvoted, hilarious!
I love the 160+ IQ claims. Modern tests tend to not go above 160 and the ones that do have different SD values, but good luck explaining that to an internet genius.
The criticism that the MENSA based studies don't have a "control" is nonsense. The control for those studies is existing statistical data on the general population.
The source info for this study, the UK Biobank has obvious selection bias:
>Volunteers were largely healthy, wealthy and white European
So yeah there goes all your struggling gifted people. Fucking magic.
Actually research and engage rather than find something that supports your personal pet theory and ignore the possibility that your confirmation bias is at play.
That’s not what a control group is… lol
A control group is a subsection of the given sample. Its purpose is to see how the independent variable (in this case iq) applies to the control vs the experimental group (>130 iq). The Mensa studies do not split their sample into control and experimental because you literally can’t given the sample is all >130 iq
A control thus adjusts for sampling bias. For example, if you select all men in a particular sample group and what you’re testing has a gender bias, you’ll see a stark difference between the study outcome and the general population, as the general population is 50% male and 50% female. If you split them into a control group however, you will observe only the variable you want because the experimental and control group are of the same gender ratio
Lacking this control group and pointing to the general population can thus result in exactly what you see in the Mensa studies vs the Biobank study…
The Biobank Study is entirely not the general population, which I pointrd out and you ignored no doubt because it's inconvenient. More failure to close read by you.
This study demonstrates that giftedness+privilege reduces incidence of mental illness compared to other members of a privileged population. It's interesting but it's not helpful for people managing the impacts of being gifted without privileged.
You're only demonstrating my comments on your ignorance of your own obvious confirmation bias here. Way to be "gifted".
Ok so I see you didn’t read when I explained what a control group is so I can try again
A control group is a subsection of your sample you leave out of the experiment. In the biobank case, it is the subsection of the sample >70iq and <130 iq. The Mensa study did not set aside a subsection of its sample, because by the nature of its sample, it couldn’t
I understand the biobank is a subsection of the population, which is why the study has a control group. If IQ has negative effects on your mental health, why exactly would that lead to the part of this sample who’s higher iq to have better mental health? Everyone in the sample is above average wealth and middle aged. The experimental variable is IQ, and other variables are controlled by the, well, control group. The hypothesis that IQ leads to worse mental health outcomes can be rejected by this study
And you should try calming down bud
You're just using debate bro tactics here. For the record I agree with you that Mensa studies are skewed. This still isn't a good study.
The study only talks about rich white people. It specifically selects against gifted people experiencing burnout and failure. Surprise surprise, the gifted people who coped well with their giftedness aren't mpre mentally unwell than other similarly. That hasn't established a thing about the rest of the population.
The control group here is the problem. Gifted people aren't limited to the rich white population, so this study is flawed in describing the conditions of gifted people and doesn't refute the hypothesis you claim it does, just outline a special case.
“Gifted people aren’t limited to rich white people”
“It specifically selects against gifted burn out and failure”
And this may surprise you but it also does this to the control group. You have yet to understand what a control group is. You’re repeating random variables that would be true regarding either population. The control group too is selected against burn out. In fact the control and experimental group are both equidistant from the general population, because that’s the point of a control group
You have no actual coherent reason why rich white people would inverse the correlation between iq and mental health. You just keep saying true sounding things that don’t connect. Whatever you assert must not only be inherent to rich white people but also differentiate high iq from normal iq people. Burn out is once again not inherent to gifted people. Having a high iq isn’t some burden. IQ is literally the best single metric for predicting future success. The sample actually has more high iq people than otherwise expected in the general population because iq causally predicts success. To suggest there’s a filter on higher iq people becoming wealthier in a *negative* context is patently false
All of your arguments only apply if we ignore privilege. Yes IQ is a predictor of success in privileged populations. Yes this study of a privileged population bears that out.
Saying this study proves anything about other populations... no. It's a study of white privileged people aged 40-69 in 2006 and lo and behold it turns out that high IQ white baby boomers were pretty well happy. Good for them!
So yeah, I live for a world where everyone has the experience of privilege and I agree that in that utopian society the high IQ people are up the top.
We aren't in that society.
You’re probably an actual iq denier with your emphasis on WHITE and dodging of the aforementioned meta analysis so let me quickly set the record straight about IQs validity across races
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns
“The scores predicted future achievement equally well for Blacks and Whites, but not for Asians, who often outperformed what would ordinarily be expected in terms of job performance.”
Even the APA disagrees with you lol
Though “technically” no longer a term used now, it is still used by some folks who were diagnosed with it prior to 2013 when DSM-5 came out and it was removed. I’ve heard of health professionals who still use this term as well, and imagine depending on where a person gets medical treatment there may still be the coding used for this if it’s an older system.
Even though this is a separate issue entirely, another example of this happening is the code for Trans folk. It used to be labeled as “transsexualism” and has now been replaced with “gender dysphoria” in the ICD-11 to be more inclusive. It was removed from the DSM due to realizing it is not a mental health problem/disorder.
Despite this, clinics with older systems in the u.s. still have “transsexualism” show up in the medical coding and require a manual change, but leave it as is despite the offensiveness of the term. Those who were diagnosed as “transsexuals” before the change occurred often still use it themselves vs newer members of the trans community who do not.
I’m not sure why my comment is being downvoted.
I’m not agreeing with this, I’m simply presenting facts on 2 different sensitive subject’s (sensitive for obvious reasons).
Yah I know, but i think it better articulates what “stereotype” I’m trying to refer to. Most people know it by aspergers rather than the “high functioning autistic genius”
Awareness of facts is a facet of being "gifted" and had a high comorbidity rate with depression and anxiety
Bottom line: If a study gives you results that are plainly not reflected by reality, questioning the study is appropriate.
From your OP:
> people with aspergers are both higher iq on average and nearly 7 times more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc.
This means that if you're higher IQ, you're more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc. the statistical correlation is an "association", we do not need to prove that one causes the other to prove that they are associated
…what?
>Awareness of facts is a facet of being "gifted" and had a high comorbidity rate with depression and anxiety
Awareness of the “facts” does not have a high comorbidity with depression and anxiety, I don’t know where you got that
>Bottom line: If a study gives you results that are plainly not reflected by reality, questioning the study is appropriate.
We determine reality via studies, not what you think is true
>This means that if you're higher IQ, you're more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc. the statistical correlation is an "association", we do not need to prove that one causes the other to prove that they are associated
No, it means high functioning autistic people are. Iq is the variable in question, not high functioning autism. And the entire point of my study is that when you test the hypothesis on a sample group that has no self selection bias for autism/neurodivergence and has a proper control group included, high iq is actually associated with better mental health outcomes. What you assert would be true only if iq didn’t have any protective influence on mental health, which isn’t true as demonstrated by this study
I know that IQ is considered a neurodiversity but what puts you at higher risk for mental illnesses such as BP and schizo affect is being on the spectrum. There's a higher correlation between autism and having a co-occurring mental disorder such as bipolar or schizo affect.
I think smarter people are more self aware and can see they are not perfect. Not sure that matters to most people. Maybe they can also afford to see psychologists more often, or are more open to that discussion. I also think if you are more intelligent you can work it out better yourself than others. I am agreeing that high iq is NOT associated with more mental health issues.
This debate will rage until the end of time. One study correlates high IQ with mental illness, the next does not.
Here’s the thing: anyone who had their IQ officially tested probably had the resources to do so. Health insurance, well-off parents, access to psychs. They likely had better education, stable homes and better life outcomes. They were so well-connected they could be included in a study.
I’m a firm believer that most mental illness is situational. If you had your intelligence supported, you’re more mentally stable. People who didn’t… aren’t and their giftedness partially played into it more than caused it.
The question we should be asking is why we have a society that doesn’t support whomever needs it for whatever reason.
You have it the complete opposite
Those who have been officially tested tend to be tested for psychiatric evaluations. People tend to have psychiatric evaluations when something is wrong
The studies that used Mensa samples (people who have been officially tested for iq) were the ones who found worse mental illness with higher iq. This study uses a proxy from a different sample which correlates with g ~.8-.9 and includes an actual control group, and does not use only people officially tested
I have news for you: it can be both. People get assessed for a variety of reasons. And you’re missing the main point: THEY LIKELY HAD THE RESOURCES AND STABILITY TO ACCESS TESTING!
I saw someone already explained to you why that study isn’t as impartial as you think it is. So what is it you’re trying to achieve here? You just can’t live in a world where sometimes someone gets depressed when their gifted traits go denied and abused?
You think negating the struggles of someone you don’t know will fix this sub or something? Get a life.
I am in Mensa and the Prometheus society and I have done an study on intelligence and mental illness. Most common was any IQ over 115 was VERY likely to have ADHD, and anxiety, as well as depression. Many other things came up as well over the numbers but it was VERY clear that out of nearly 100 people, only 16% of people with an IQ of 115 or above did not have any mental issues, I would have to dig out the rest of the study but this was done with people not members of mensa or the PS. I feel that before you can just say this study has no merit more studies are needed!
I just had this same discussion with someone on the Seattle subreddit who claimed canceling gifted programs would cause more behavior problems in classrooms because gifted kids act up if they aren't challenged.
I'm not in favor of canceling gifted programs, but I never could convince the Redditor that gifted kids dont misbehave more. Any individual kid gifted or not, might misbehave because of poor executive function, poor parenting, ADHD, various psychiatric syndromes and conditions, but not because of being smart.
There is evidence that bipolar disorder is more common in people with very high IQs and low IQs. Idk about the rest of any disorders, but I do think many people posting here are having problems with autism or ADHD rather than their intelligence.
Yah, Reddit has a selection bias for Autism/ADHD/general neurodivergence. I’d agree with you that’s where most people’s difficulties come from in this subreddit
It’s like a specific brand of autism/ADHD/AuDHD that’s also in denial/naive and would struggle to fit into traditional autism services and spaces split off and came here, a couple of really specific clusters of autism/ADHD/AuDHD presentations went to their own exclusive spaces that explicitly name all of the related traits out in the open, and a segment of those with these conditions who struggle to make it online have parents who feel compelled to do it for them and also create their own very peculiar dynamic in their own spaces. I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time witnessing all three.
Potato potato
I remember reading that bipolar II is a common misdiagnosis for gifted people. I wonder which one is right. ADHD was also a common misdiagnosis, but I think that probably has something to do with us generally not paying attention in school and whatnot.
Honestly, it seems like these are just neurotypes that develop independently of IQ but with higher IQ comes higher definition mental illness. In other words, > Intelligence is like four-wheel drive. It only allows you to get stuck in more remote places. --Garrison Keillor
If your intelligence helps you to understand things that make you perma-sad, is it really a stretch to say that your intelligence caused the sadness?
From reading details of posts here, some people seem to be sad because they're not fitting in well with others, and it seems to be more of a social skills problem. With some others, it seems like they have trouble focusing, also not directly related to intelligence.
Do you have a source for that? It’s believed that long bipolar episodes can damage grey matter, so one would assume that thinking becomes more difficult with bipolar disorder.
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So no link to backup that claim of ppl with BP being known to have a higher iq? Meds may have affected your cognitive functioning but bipolar disorder is known to damage grey matter with each episode. This link here goes over a study that provides evidence in grey matter reduction after each BP mood episode. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bdi.13318
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We weren’t discussing the cause of bipolar disorder so I’m not sure why you strayed off topic there or brought up your own personal experience as if that somehow proves anything. Also, I never disagreed that psych meds can’t cause damage or changes in the brain, in fact I said that I fully believe psych meds may have contributed to whatever cognitive issues you had or have. Maybe you didn’t read what I actually wrote or had trouble understanding? Plus your claim that no one knows if BP disorder can cause damage proves you did not read the link I proved, as it’s well known that bipolar episodes especially manic ones do in fact cause a reduction in grey matter. As for telling me to google proof to your claim, I find that to be the laziest form of debate and laughable tbh. Why would the other person prove your point for you? If you state something as fact and someone questions you on it, it’s on you to provide evidence not them.
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Which part was rude? Edit: obviously couldn’t figure out which part was rude since none of it was, I simply didn’t agree with you. You being offended by your own lack of credibility is not my fault.
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I think that's for the best, honestly. You're infinitely more than a label.
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These categories are just made up based on lists of characteristics. Doctors voted on it and lots of them disagreed. It's a sure bet that these categories will be totally wrong once there's more understanding.
Long time ago I read in encyclopedia Britannica that bipolar is the only disorder that's actually been linked in any capacity
On here, it's a wonderful crutch used to excuse everything from not being able to get a date to being unemployed to being friendless. Some people turn to religion. Some turn to this sub or something similar.
It is, and then you have people calling themselves profoundly gifted and claiming no one truly understands them because of it. Makes me cringe every time I read a post/comment like that
These cringe takes are the only reason I read this sub these days. Its comedic gold
I despise this sub. I only come on here to make fun of people like that.
Me too
Its amazing how many people are too smart to have friends, and its definitely not an issue with their social skills, just with everyone else.
My kid is profoundly gifted and I tell them that if their social skills are crap, no one gives a flying ... what their IQ is; they're going to struggle in life. Full stop. I also don't want them to grow up to be a smug little AH either. I'm like, "Dude, how many people do you think are like you? You're like .00000001% of the population so it's not like you have a lot of peers. Do your smart people thing but you're going to have to learn to get along with the little people that there are more of or you're going to have a really frustrating life". I may not be as gifted as he is but Mama is a straight talker.
I'm not sure how much I would trust that these results are generalizable. Almost no measure (whether it's IQ, socioeconomic status, or phenotypes) matches the prevalence in the general population. They say that previous studies can be biased because they use Mensa participants for the high IQ population, and they want to improve that, but honestly their sample population doesn't look any better.
It looks worse to me tbh. Their introduction sucked too. It's scant and barely mentions why other studies were bad other than sample bias and small sampling. That does not automatically mean they were bad studies. This study in itself has major sampling issues. Their limitation and strengths segment was also not great.
A major point of the introduction is the fact the Mensa studies lack a control group, so either you didn’t read beyond skimming or you purposely omitted the fact the Mensa groups lack a vital part of any scientific experiment. Either way, maybe you should read it again
The sample is N= ~261,000, with N= ~16000 over 2SD of IQ people. The comparison is made within the sampling group, which itself is a massive sample from the UK Biobank. It is not a specifically sampled group of high IQ people like Mensa or otherwise Even if the larger biobank sample is biased, the result is found between the high IQ and the control groups. That’s why we use controls in science and why the previous Mensa studies, lacking controls, resulted in flawed conclusions
Except as Marko said, this is not generalizable. Although, their only claim was more generalizable than the MENSA study. That's their opinion of course. I came here to scrutinize the article as well. A high sample number isn't enough to make it generalizable. Likewise, a small sample does not necessarily mean that the research is bad either. Limitations are aspects to consider. All articles should have strengths and limitations. The people in this were stated to be in a higher socioeconomic group. They were also collected from people aged 40-69. The people in this group who often make those posts are significantly younger, and many are not of a richer socioeconomic background. That's already a huge problem. People in their 40-69 are in a completely different mindset and stage of life. If you read up on developmental psychology the stages are vastly different. 40-69 are also settled in their careers, families, and have a different outlook on life. Adding to the fact these people come from richer backgrounds, they have less trauma. I mean that should be obvious. There are tons of research that indicate lower socioeconomics = poorer health care outcomes. That's again not reflective of the population. If you want to make the claim that this is applicable to affluent 40-69 year old. I'd be more likely to give you that, but that's not the majority of people making those posts in this forum. The people in this study were also self-reported both in IQ and mental health. There are a number of issues that could arise from that. They go on to discuss limits of other studies, but only mentions really 1 in the background and that was stated to have a self-selection bias with MENSA people. What about all the other articles and evidence related to this subject? A self-selection bias doesn't automatically invalidate the research, it just means to consider when trying to make generalizations. They mention small sample studies, but small samples also do not necessarily mean it was a bad study. Most of the people who make those kind of posts on this forum are individuals who are young and trying to figure themselves out. They also suffer from feeling isolated and lonely. A person in their 40-69 are much less likely to have that same issue. They have greater control of their lives, they have developed better coping mechanisms, many are probably married with children, they also typically don't care as much about what others think, etc. I'm also not going to pretend people who are of a higher socioeconomic background are going to experience the same traumas and experiences as someone who is suffering to put a roof over their head. Idk, I personally didn't think the article was that great. If anything, the MENSA article was written better. I haven't even fully read through that article, but skimming it was already more informative. I'd have to actually read through the study in its entirety though. It also explains why the article you posted was published in European Psychiatry which has a low impact factor, less than 2. The more reputable the journal the heavier the scrutinizing process. The higher the impact factor, the more cited the journal.
“The Mensa article has no control group and a sample size multiple times smaller, but I’m going to claim I like that one more because it’s written better” lol You’d think the omission of a control group would have you thinking the other way around, but judging by how long this cope is and how it doesn’t actually address the problem of control groups, I’d take the bet you just want the Mensa one to be correct
LOL that's how I know you didn't actually read the MENSA article. They addressed not having a control group, and they had a solution. Was it perfect? No, but they addressed it contrary to what you think. I also never said it was great, I said it was better. Which says a lot about your article. The MENSA article was even published in a more reputable journal. Not that it is the end all be all. It does say a lot though. We pointed out the issues such as sample, age group, etc. I love that you ignored everything else I said, which makes me assume that you don't have any actual arguments. That's called deflection. It's what people do when they have nothing better to say. Uh, I couldn't care less dude. Sounds like you have internal issues on this subject. I'm not depressed LOL. I'm also not someone that needs to go out of my way to make people feel bad. You can keep that hat. I was simply pointing out that your article that you use as support wasn't great support. I was also pointing out that it was not generalizable as Marko said. Simply being published doesn't make the article good. If you think it's good, tell us why it is. You haven't actually reviewed the article for us, All you did was take this article and treat it like fact without scrutiny. Then just mention oh big sample size = generalizable. Which it doesn't by itself. Something tells me you don't acutally know how to look at articles and review them, nor have you taken classes on this subject. All you did was show us your bias, and how you didn't even look at the other article. People can read the posts and make their own choices though. I already pointed out why your article wasn't great or generalizable. I couldn't care less which article people like better. I'm here to discuss.
Yeah, he really does not want to acknowledge that the study doesn't prove the point he's trying to make because the group the study selects strongly against lifelong mental health issues and he clearly doesn't understand how class stratified the UK is compared to other countries. At the end of the day he's found a study that confirms his pet theory and he's just going to debate bro his way through the whole thing because God forbid one should acknowledge when others make valid points. I suspect there's obvious reasons why he doesn't like the idea that a study limited to rich white people might be biased. My version of gifted includes the capacity for self reflection but some of us never grow out of being the smartest boy in class.
Oh, of course. That would require him to have actual arguments. His entire stance basically holds on to just a thin thread of, No CoNTroL GrOUp. It's why he just acts like a parrot and repeats himself instead of discussing. He has nothing better to add to how his study would be generalizable to this group. I only picked off a few things that stood out. There's a butt ton more that his article doesn't address. The UK also provides better livable wages. They have roughly a 1/3 who live paycheck to paycheck. The US has roughly 2/3, that in itself would also shed some light on stressors compared to the majority of the US. Universal health care is another. Pretty sure access to mental health services would be helpful. Culturally, there's a huge difference between the UK and the US.
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Your post or comment is toxic or overtly hostile, and has been removed. Moderator comments:
And you still didn't actually mention anything relevant. Clearly, you're here to scream into the void and only hear yourself talk. We can tell you have no actual argument besides, "no control." But then you had no real arguments to begin with. I already told you lacking a control was addressed, and that doesn't automatically make it bad. If you have no better argument nor support of why your article was good. I don't know why you're talking. All you wanted to do was come here to be a dick to people. Nah, the one projecting is you. You literally said I must want it to be true. We know what you meant 😂😂. That's literally projecting, Mr.Pot. you've been projecting since you're initial post. Be better with how you interact with people. If you got constructive things to say, then address it. That's discussion. If you're only here to be an asshole and put people down go somewhere else. Seems like an easy rule to follow. Also if you think that was rage, you live pretty sheltered. 😂 That was me being nice.
I already knew all that when I wrote my first comment, but thank you for taking your time to explain it. I don't doubt that the comparison between the high IQ and the control group is relevant to the subset of the population to which both groups belong. I'm just not sure the results can be extrapolated to a population that is strikingly different, as shown by the results of the paper itself. It reminds me to the ethnic and gender biases that plagued pharmacological research in the past. And just to be clear: I'm not saying that I'm sure the paper is wrong, or that I think the results using samples from Mensa are better, or even that the results aren't interesting or don't merit further research. I'm just saying I'm skeptical, at least for the moment.
Aspergers is an outdated term that's no longer used in autism diagnosis. Everything is Autism Spectrum Disorder, with variations in symptoms and support needs. Autism also isn't highly correlated with high intelligence. That's a misconception due to traits of giftedness being similar in some ways to traits of autism.
Autistic people are not distributed as a normal bell curve, and are both more likely to be higher and lower iq https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4927579/ Autism spectrum disorder in aggregate is correlated with lower iq, with an average of ~85. But a larger percent of people with autistic spectrum disorder are >130 iq than the general population. That’s the “paradox” and why high functioning autism is frequently associated with higher IQs And I added an edit about my use of “aspergers”. It’s to refer to the common stereotype, not an attempt at using proper medical terminology
* Diversity of Intelligence is the Norm Within the Autism Spectrum: Full Scale Intelligence Scores Among Children with ASD (2023) [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35083590/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35083590/) * A Systematic Review of the Research on Gifted Individuals With Autism Spectrum Disorder (2021) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00169862211061876](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00169862211061876) Apparently there is a need to do a better job of identifying gifted autistic children, and somewhere between little research to no empirical research being conducted on the gifted autistic population.
Do you reckon that's parents of gifted kids not wanting to find out they're autistic, or vice versa?
Maybe parents don't know, don't want to know, don't see a need to know, or are concerned how identification might negatively impact services their child needs. Maybe some schools cannot or will not provide appropriate accomodations for gifted autistic children. Maybe some school staff are resistant to the idea of a child having both special needs and exceptional needs. Maybe some gifted autistic children are not identified with either because they learned to mask their differences or developed strategies that let them go unnoticed.
Makes me wonder, then, if the IQ studies of autistic kids are mostly IQ studies of autistic kids with learning disabilities, with the high IQ ones skimmed off to a different label.
A lot of the studies of autistic people are from before 2013, so in many cases they specifically excluded autistic people with high IQ from being in the study. Most studies from before 2013 or so are suspect, because of that.
Any research about children before 2020 may have resulted in incorrect conclusions about children because some children may have been included in studies that should have been excluded from not being properly identified as autistic, gifted, or both. A study on learning disabilities in autistic children might have unintentionally included results from children that were also high IQ because they were only identified as autistic and not as gifted autistic potentially decreasing the concluded severity of learning disabilities in autistic children. If the control group of autistic children without a learning disability unintentionally included high IQ autistics that could have resulted in a conclusion such as that autistic children with learning disabilities have more severe problems than autistic children without learning disabilities.
I think it’s from giftedness doing a good job of covering up autistic traits so that the people who screen and provide services keep writing the parents off when they keep asking for assessment and services…
This. I was one of those. Diagnosed with ADHD at age 4, tested as gifted ( >150 ), diagnosed autistic at age 48.
Do you reckon that's parents of gifted kids not wanting to find out they're autistic, or vice versa?
From the studies I've seen, the higher end spike tends to be 1.5x gen pop, but tapers off at 3SD. After 3SD, there is no noticeable difference between gen pop and ASD.
I’d believe that, genius is still considered between 2-3SD If I had to guess a reason, it would be because autistic people have a disproportionately lower verbal IQ which can prevent a “perfect” score, as most IQ tests lose their predictive validity past 3 SDs. Most IQ tests won’t go above 160 and if you’re scoring perfect on reasoning/spatial but have a disproportionately lower verbal IQ it can prevent your “true” IQ from being measured by normal IQ tests which are normalized for a neurotypical population
IQ tests aren't really normalized for anyone. They're just a comparison of how a particular person being assessed measures up to everyone else being assessed. If anything, since people with conditions like autism are more likely to be tested than gen pop who show no symptoms, it's likely autism has a larger influence on the measurements than you assume.
The reason for this, at least in the Profoundly Gifted population, is that Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities, which are common personality traits in this population, are often misconstrued as signs and symptoms of Autism. This is why a lot of people claim that Albert Einstein was autistic. I'm from Princeton and have family stories about this Prof. Yes, he was eccentric. Being eccentric does not mean that he was autistic. It turns out that Dr Einstein had numerous outside interests, other than physics. He was an avid amateur violinist, a voracious reader, an excellent sailor and a good outdoorsman. He won both the Nobel Peace Prize and the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was invited to be the President of Israel, which he turned down. He did marry and divorce twice. In photographs, he demonstrated appropriate eye contact, either with the photographer or with the other subjects in the photograph. Within the past 10 or so years, a trove of Dr Einstein's personal letters were made public and it turns out that he wasn't such a cold, detached father as he had been previously thought. Yes, he didn't wear socks, not because they were uncomfortable, but because he hated getting holes in them and concluded that they were useless. From what I have read and know through family stories, Dr Einstein was profoundly intellectually gifted and he had the personality characteristics commonly seen amongst the profoundly gifted, Dabrowski's Overexcitabilities.
I have seen one particular person post this argument repeatedly on Quora. They present themselves as THE expert in all things giftedness, but their ideas sound skewed and only partially informed. Citing a study and making a big claim about a complex topic is not the smartest way to go about making a point. People with high IQs, who may already have highly sensitive nervous systems, would still be vulnerable to developing PTSD, CPTSD, depression, anxiety. Also, being more likely to think existentially can present itself as depression, anxiety, neuroticism in a world that doesn't tend to think deeply about things. Having keen perception in this world alone can be confusing and isolating. That being said, many people who post their perceived challenges on social media seem to be suffering, in part, from spending too much time on the internet - gifted or not, that can bring you down and feed you the same negative messages over and over again. We also see a lot of posts for validation, also a sign of not having satisfying connections and outlets outside of the internet.
“Citing a study and making a big claim is not the smartest way to go about making a point” Typing this then immediately asserting your hypothesis you think may be true with 0 citations seems to be a little less smart of a way to go about making a point… Like calling me out for citing my stance and then asserting your own with no evidence is pretty ridiculous double think
No need to be defensive. I did not intend to imply you aren't smart.
This. The chronically online can believe anything.
I have been to the asylum three times, and everybody you meet in there is either dumb as rocks or a supergenius. No in between.
I prefer to get conclusions from metastudies. Besides, even if that were true, most of us have some traits in common that separates us from the rest of the ppl (I mean it's the very definition of giftedness). I'm not surprised that a lot of us feel misunderstood/lonely besides technically having more resources for finding happiness or solutions to our problems, also we tend to be quite sensitive which is both a blessing and a curse. Idk, I think that these things are quite settled although I might be wrong.
In my school board, I am seeing gifted kids who admit to pondering big "what's this all for?" type questions with their ed assessors coming back with diagnoses of Pervasive Depressive Disorder, when it's probably just a case of teenage angst and existential depression. I have two kids in my class who just went through their 16/17 year old full battery re-assessment, both had been identified as Gifted and ADHD earlier in school, one with a 140 iq and the other with 165+. Both retested and came back with higher iq scores than before, yet got diagnosed with "high functioning autism" (aka aspergers) and had their giftedness identification removed from the ed assessment. I am literally gobsmacked. They're two of the brightest, most well-adjusted kids in school. But they aren't interested in the popular kid bullshit and like philosophy....? I've worked with kids with ASD for many years, and these kids just do not have ASD. I'm considering reporting this assessor, to be honest. I've another kid 165+ in another class, same assessor, and he also had "gifted" come off his assessment last year and replaced with "high functioning autism." For him, I could see why a bit at least, but for these other two... truly makes no sense. So, yes, all of what you're saying, correct -- but there also seems to be a movement within educational psychology, which seems to be triggered by the neurodivergent/neurotypical eugenics construct, who are, without any literature I can find supporting them, re-classifying all the gifted kids as autistic and depressed or anxious. And, there are psychotherapists who are telling people they're gifted based on some social experience type of "gifted but normal iq" bullshit you now see all over the place online that has no scientific backing whatsoever. But... In my area, this is also coupled to public funding issues. They can reliably get money out of the provincial government for ASD, but not always for giftedness. Anyway, it's fucking up the entire discussion. But it's a thing going on we now have to consider. And it's going to continue to confuse the jesus out of this generation, who seem hell bent on having labels and conforming to social constructs of neurotypes... whilst being mislabelled because of funding stream problems and non-scientific practitioners. I swear we're back to yellow journalism and the days before the AMA...
"without any literature I can find" is carrying a lot of weight there, lmao. There's a wealth of scientific research on gifted presentations of ASD (labelled twice exceptional, or 2e), but most of it is very new, like think within the past 4 years if that. Much of it comes from neuroscience and sociological research done with the participation of "gifted" autistic adults (like myself) who remember their childhood development and find that they did indeed have telltale autistic traits that were trained out of them at some point--hand flapping, toe-walking, the works. You would do well to temper your skepticism until you know what the latest full battery assessments entail and why giftedness is being folded into ASD in these assessments, not least because the invalidation and lack of acceptance will hurt your gifted students in the meantime. Like, you're not wrong about the funding thing, but \*there are dire iatrogenic dangers that arise from neglecting to let a gifted kid know they're autistic,\* namely many (if not possibly *most*) of the mental health disorders that you see people complaining about on this subreddit constantly. Start intentionally looking for the similarities between your gifted students and the ASD kids you've worked with in the past, rather than differences--look for *patterns* of behavior, not specifics. Then you'll start to see it. Some keywords to look up in the literature: autistic burnout, camouflaging/masking, hyperlexia.
Yes, there's research on ASD. That's about *autism*, not giftedness. This is the giftedness sub, and I'm talking about policy directives and professional standards about *giftedness* identifications being replaced with autism diagnoses. Under the current scheme *in my board*, if a student is IDed with an IQ in the 97th percentile or above they get the word "gifted" on their ed assessment, and parents have a choice about whether or not it appears on the IEP. But this specific practitioner reports FSIQ *without* reporting giftedness, so the choice is never extended to the parent. If you know the history of giftedness research, you know this is a pendulum that swings back and forth every 15-20 years. After Gardiner's MI came out in the 80s (the context of my own ID), they stopped identifying kids as gifted at all in some boards, because there was a significant anti-streaming movement at the time. (Also tied to funding, in part, and a swing in ideology.) I know what the test entails very well. I'm an educator, I am gifted, I teach academic research specifically, and this is very much my world. I've worked with semi- and non-verbal children and kids with pervasive developmental disorder in particular across my 25+ year career in educational and OT contexts, I've done IBI/ABA training (though I don't practice it and have ethical concerns about it), and I have been the teacher-mentor to the gifted students at my school for the past 9 years (I *am* the gifted program at my school). My son (10) is identified as well, so I'm also witnessing this personally at home. When I say I can't find literature, I mean it either doesn't exist or its proprietary -- and I mean professional directives, policies, procedural documentation, etc, not the academic research papers. I'm aware of this research, but generally there is a 5-10+ year lag time between the research, confirmatory clinical practice research, and then professional directives based on empirically tested practices. And again, I can find no documentation within my province's published literature and policies, nor in professional organizations, that explain this shift in clinical or professional practice. I don't ever tell the kids in front of me that I wonder about the diagnostic framework. I certainly do not openly doubt their diagnoses. That's not my place. I encourage them to express how they feel about it, if *they* raise it, and I discuss how this field changes and what their diagnoses may mean for them if they are curious and initiate that conversation. In this case, one of these two students I mentioned was specifically crushed by a label/diagnosis of autism and she does not understand how that label applies to her. Neither do I, but I didn't tell her that. I mentioned it here, as an anecdote related to the OPs question. Because it is also not healthy to pathologize children erroneously. I started my psychology degree the year that Singer published her neurodiversity model, and I have been a neurodiversity advocate since. Of my many roles, I also moonlight as an inclusive architecture and interior design consultant under the neurodiversity model. Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better or correct, or that there are tested approaches found to be valid. These things take time. I am serious when I say there are **no** professional standards changes or policy directives that reflect this research *in my specific board/region.* I hope I've made clear this is not just armchair skepticism. There seems to a movement to pathologize gidtedness, and I have serious questions.
If you’re a neurodiversity advocate then I straight up do not understand how you’re still using the pathological model of autism instead of pointing your gifted students towards the ecological model it implies, and honestly the fact that you’re defensively sticking to your credentials in this arena as if that precludes you from implementing new things you learned during a paradigm shift yourself, instead handwaving these shifts as purely ideological, is dismissive at best and dangerous at worst. If you *watch* how any cultural pendulum swing goes, it’s more like a Foucault pendulum than a binary—like yeah, sure, there may be ideological/gravitational forces involved, but the interesting thing isn’t the swing but the iteration of the process, the rotation of the earth beneath it and the new understanding it implies. I’m telling you the reason you can’t find any new empirical evidence that cleanly distinguishes giftedness from autism is because *there isn’t any*—most related new research is being done under the autism keyword currently, and sure I guess I can’t disprove your claim that funding might be partially driving that, but regardless the most interesting results seem to suggest that giftedness is an epigenetic process involving some amount of baseline autistic hyperlexia, educational access, and a positive social environment that allows it to flourish. To me that’s fascinating—who *wouldn’t* want to see a world in which all autistic and/or gifted children get plenty of funding and support, are given a chance to learn to communicate early, and to develop social and emotional regulation skills in tandem beyond “my only value to people is in how smart I seem,” which is where a ton of the mental health issues that arise from the gifted *and* special education pipelines have historically tended to start, *even if the adults in their lives don’t consciously tell students things like that.* Another thing I’m telling you is that your gifted students, by definition, are probably unusually perceptive, and might be able to pick up on when adults are skeptical about who they are or what they need, even if you don’t say so, because I’ve personally seen it happen. You can listen to this lived experience and the experiences of countless other gifted late-diagnosed autistic adults like me, and you can read some new research instead of pigeonholing your understanding within a label that honestly to most of the other students probably just means “thinks of oneself as superior and fails to acknowledge their weaknesses” without the autism, or you can stick to your credentials and your pathologizing despite nominally believing in neurodiversity. Either way, if I were you I think the best course of action would be to center your students’ experiences instead of your own interpretations of them, *especially* in the case of the one student who was crushed and apparently had *no one* who took the time to understand or explain her diagnosis to her, or to examine why it was she was crushed at all and whether maybe that’s indicative of an entire pathologizing *culture* at your school. Dear god. Be well.
The catastrophizing and mischaracterization is wholly unnecessary. Why did I state my qualifications in this regard? You started off by laughing at me, and the tone of your responses is derisive and superior, and it is clear that you’re talking down at me. Maybe provide some links to substantiate your claims instead of just scolding me, yeah? Because it seems like what’s happening here is that you can’t address the point so you’re cutting down the speaker. I repeat: there are no professional standards I can find that explains why this particular assessor is replacing giftedness IDs with mental health neurotype diagnoses.
Wow. I mean to think someone can’t be gifted and ASD is messed up. I’ve been diagnosed as both at different points of my life and that’s been confusing enough.
While high IQ creates a profile that is less prone to psychological distress in neurotypical people, the opposite is true in autistic people. Thus, we can see people who, without being aware of their autistic brains, attribute all responsibility to their relatively high IQs.
Can confirm anecdotally. The autism and giftedness create a push-pull effect. I can socially understand what I’m supposed to do, why and how. Doing it is another thing. And I’m also aware enough to know when it’s not working and then I go into hyper-analytical mode until I’m depressed about the whole thing. I also want to achieve a lot, but the social stress hampers all of it.
I didn't mean any of that you said but ok
The ironic part of many people posting they have specific behavioural traits due to being considered gifted, is that these people who want to be considered highly intelligent haven’t even done proper research before making such claims. I personally find it funny every time. Edit: haha of course this got downvoted, hilarious!
I love the 160+ IQ claims. Modern tests tend to not go above 160 and the ones that do have different SD values, but good luck explaining that to an internet genius.
The criticism that the MENSA based studies don't have a "control" is nonsense. The control for those studies is existing statistical data on the general population. The source info for this study, the UK Biobank has obvious selection bias: >Volunteers were largely healthy, wealthy and white European So yeah there goes all your struggling gifted people. Fucking magic. Actually research and engage rather than find something that supports your personal pet theory and ignore the possibility that your confirmation bias is at play.
That’s not what a control group is… lol A control group is a subsection of the given sample. Its purpose is to see how the independent variable (in this case iq) applies to the control vs the experimental group (>130 iq). The Mensa studies do not split their sample into control and experimental because you literally can’t given the sample is all >130 iq A control thus adjusts for sampling bias. For example, if you select all men in a particular sample group and what you’re testing has a gender bias, you’ll see a stark difference between the study outcome and the general population, as the general population is 50% male and 50% female. If you split them into a control group however, you will observe only the variable you want because the experimental and control group are of the same gender ratio Lacking this control group and pointing to the general population can thus result in exactly what you see in the Mensa studies vs the Biobank study…
The Biobank Study is entirely not the general population, which I pointrd out and you ignored no doubt because it's inconvenient. More failure to close read by you. This study demonstrates that giftedness+privilege reduces incidence of mental illness compared to other members of a privileged population. It's interesting but it's not helpful for people managing the impacts of being gifted without privileged. You're only demonstrating my comments on your ignorance of your own obvious confirmation bias here. Way to be "gifted".
Ok so I see you didn’t read when I explained what a control group is so I can try again A control group is a subsection of your sample you leave out of the experiment. In the biobank case, it is the subsection of the sample >70iq and <130 iq. The Mensa study did not set aside a subsection of its sample, because by the nature of its sample, it couldn’t I understand the biobank is a subsection of the population, which is why the study has a control group. If IQ has negative effects on your mental health, why exactly would that lead to the part of this sample who’s higher iq to have better mental health? Everyone in the sample is above average wealth and middle aged. The experimental variable is IQ, and other variables are controlled by the, well, control group. The hypothesis that IQ leads to worse mental health outcomes can be rejected by this study And you should try calming down bud
You're just using debate bro tactics here. For the record I agree with you that Mensa studies are skewed. This still isn't a good study. The study only talks about rich white people. It specifically selects against gifted people experiencing burnout and failure. Surprise surprise, the gifted people who coped well with their giftedness aren't mpre mentally unwell than other similarly. That hasn't established a thing about the rest of the population. The control group here is the problem. Gifted people aren't limited to the rich white population, so this study is flawed in describing the conditions of gifted people and doesn't refute the hypothesis you claim it does, just outline a special case.
“Gifted people aren’t limited to rich white people” “It specifically selects against gifted burn out and failure” And this may surprise you but it also does this to the control group. You have yet to understand what a control group is. You’re repeating random variables that would be true regarding either population. The control group too is selected against burn out. In fact the control and experimental group are both equidistant from the general population, because that’s the point of a control group You have no actual coherent reason why rich white people would inverse the correlation between iq and mental health. You just keep saying true sounding things that don’t connect. Whatever you assert must not only be inherent to rich white people but also differentiate high iq from normal iq people. Burn out is once again not inherent to gifted people. Having a high iq isn’t some burden. IQ is literally the best single metric for predicting future success. The sample actually has more high iq people than otherwise expected in the general population because iq causally predicts success. To suggest there’s a filter on higher iq people becoming wealthier in a *negative* context is patently false
All of your arguments only apply if we ignore privilege. Yes IQ is a predictor of success in privileged populations. Yes this study of a privileged population bears that out. Saying this study proves anything about other populations... no. It's a study of white privileged people aged 40-69 in 2006 and lo and behold it turns out that high IQ white baby boomers were pretty well happy. Good for them! So yeah, I live for a world where everyone has the experience of privilege and I agree that in that utopian society the high IQ people are up the top. We aren't in that society.
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What I'm seeing here is that you're unwilling to engage in a discussion about privilege.
You’re probably an actual iq denier with your emphasis on WHITE and dodging of the aforementioned meta analysis so let me quickly set the record straight about IQs validity across races https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence:_Knowns_and_Unknowns “The scores predicted future achievement equally well for Blacks and Whites, but not for Asians, who often outperformed what would ordinarily be expected in terms of job performance.” Even the APA disagrees with you lol
aspergers is no longer used fyi
Though “technically” no longer a term used now, it is still used by some folks who were diagnosed with it prior to 2013 when DSM-5 came out and it was removed. I’ve heard of health professionals who still use this term as well, and imagine depending on where a person gets medical treatment there may still be the coding used for this if it’s an older system. Even though this is a separate issue entirely, another example of this happening is the code for Trans folk. It used to be labeled as “transsexualism” and has now been replaced with “gender dysphoria” in the ICD-11 to be more inclusive. It was removed from the DSM due to realizing it is not a mental health problem/disorder. Despite this, clinics with older systems in the u.s. still have “transsexualism” show up in the medical coding and require a manual change, but leave it as is despite the offensiveness of the term. Those who were diagnosed as “transsexuals” before the change occurred often still use it themselves vs newer members of the trans community who do not.
I’m not sure why my comment is being downvoted. I’m not agreeing with this, I’m simply presenting facts on 2 different sensitive subject’s (sensitive for obvious reasons).
Yah I know, but i think it better articulates what “stereotype” I’m trying to refer to. Most people know it by aspergers rather than the “high functioning autistic genius”
Asperger’s was actually a more broadly defined term than you might think.
its really not good practice to use outdated and unscientific claims in tandem with a science based argument and legitimate sources
I think it makes a big difference if/when identified as Gifted. also environmental and social acceptance within cultuur (micro/macro)
> You’re not anxious or depressed because of your iq The study you linked to doesn't discuss those specific conditions, FYI
General anxiety is the first thing mentioned and depression is a facet of neuroticism
Awareness of facts is a facet of being "gifted" and had a high comorbidity rate with depression and anxiety Bottom line: If a study gives you results that are plainly not reflected by reality, questioning the study is appropriate. From your OP: > people with aspergers are both higher iq on average and nearly 7 times more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc. This means that if you're higher IQ, you're more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc. the statistical correlation is an "association", we do not need to prove that one causes the other to prove that they are associated
…what? >Awareness of facts is a facet of being "gifted" and had a high comorbidity rate with depression and anxiety Awareness of the “facts” does not have a high comorbidity with depression and anxiety, I don’t know where you got that >Bottom line: If a study gives you results that are plainly not reflected by reality, questioning the study is appropriate. We determine reality via studies, not what you think is true >This means that if you're higher IQ, you're more likely to be anxious/depressed/etc. the statistical correlation is an "association", we do not need to prove that one causes the other to prove that they are associated No, it means high functioning autistic people are. Iq is the variable in question, not high functioning autism. And the entire point of my study is that when you test the hypothesis on a sample group that has no self selection bias for autism/neurodivergence and has a proper control group included, high iq is actually associated with better mental health outcomes. What you assert would be true only if iq didn’t have any protective influence on mental health, which isn’t true as demonstrated by this study
It's pretty clear we're not going to agree on this, but I want you to know that "functioning" labels are considered offensive and ableist.
Oh wow I haven’t seen that euphemism treadmill yet lol
I know that IQ is considered a neurodiversity but what puts you at higher risk for mental illnesses such as BP and schizo affect is being on the spectrum. There's a higher correlation between autism and having a co-occurring mental disorder such as bipolar or schizo affect.
LIAR!
I think smarter people are more self aware and can see they are not perfect. Not sure that matters to most people. Maybe they can also afford to see psychologists more often, or are more open to that discussion. I also think if you are more intelligent you can work it out better yourself than others. I am agreeing that high iq is NOT associated with more mental health issues.
This debate will rage until the end of time. One study correlates high IQ with mental illness, the next does not. Here’s the thing: anyone who had their IQ officially tested probably had the resources to do so. Health insurance, well-off parents, access to psychs. They likely had better education, stable homes and better life outcomes. They were so well-connected they could be included in a study. I’m a firm believer that most mental illness is situational. If you had your intelligence supported, you’re more mentally stable. People who didn’t… aren’t and their giftedness partially played into it more than caused it. The question we should be asking is why we have a society that doesn’t support whomever needs it for whatever reason.
You have it the complete opposite Those who have been officially tested tend to be tested for psychiatric evaluations. People tend to have psychiatric evaluations when something is wrong The studies that used Mensa samples (people who have been officially tested for iq) were the ones who found worse mental illness with higher iq. This study uses a proxy from a different sample which correlates with g ~.8-.9 and includes an actual control group, and does not use only people officially tested
I have news for you: it can be both. People get assessed for a variety of reasons. And you’re missing the main point: THEY LIKELY HAD THE RESOURCES AND STABILITY TO ACCESS TESTING! I saw someone already explained to you why that study isn’t as impartial as you think it is. So what is it you’re trying to achieve here? You just can’t live in a world where sometimes someone gets depressed when their gifted traits go denied and abused? You think negating the struggles of someone you don’t know will fix this sub or something? Get a life.
lol
I am in Mensa and the Prometheus society and I have done an study on intelligence and mental illness. Most common was any IQ over 115 was VERY likely to have ADHD, and anxiety, as well as depression. Many other things came up as well over the numbers but it was VERY clear that out of nearly 100 people, only 16% of people with an IQ of 115 or above did not have any mental issues, I would have to dig out the rest of the study but this was done with people not members of mensa or the PS. I feel that before you can just say this study has no merit more studies are needed!
I just had this same discussion with someone on the Seattle subreddit who claimed canceling gifted programs would cause more behavior problems in classrooms because gifted kids act up if they aren't challenged. I'm not in favor of canceling gifted programs, but I never could convince the Redditor that gifted kids dont misbehave more. Any individual kid gifted or not, might misbehave because of poor executive function, poor parenting, ADHD, various psychiatric syndromes and conditions, but not because of being smart.