I received Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents: Understanding the Suicidal Mind (second edition) in the mail and opened it today written by Tracy Cross, PhD and Jennifer Cross, PhD. I used to be a School Psychologist doing the Psychomatry testing for Special Education and for the Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) program and am a Psychologist that works in Forensic Psycholgy in CA Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) where we are working on understanding and prevention of Suicide in the prison system and in the community where I live. I read this short book and found it well written and informative. As another review pointed out, the price for this book appeared expensive but as I see it, it is educational and probably appropriate imo. Suicide is complicated and Dr’s Cross did a good job summarizing multiple things as they relate to suicide and GATE students. I recommend reading this book from Prufrock Press inc publishers. I believe we have a long way to go in addressing suicidal behavior and am saddened when people decide to act in a self harming way. ( )

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

It's hard to know how to review this book, as my first reaction upon reading was that I cannot possibly be among the anticipated readers. I don't work with kids nor am I an academic; I assumed that this book was for all who are interested, and as a mature adult who well remembers being an adolescent who often fervently wished that he were not alive, I thought that might include me. In fact, chapter 10 actually opens by saying that "this book is for the general public" (p. 95). But it is not written for that public. It is explicitly academic, obscure, meandering, and often off-putting when it obviously aspires to be inclusive. I had hoped that this book might be a rare and helpful guide for those in a position to help a suicidal teen.

Case in point: After opening with a few pages of by-the-numbers prefaces, an introduction starts off readably enough, and introduces in broad strokes the relationship between suicideal ideation (thoughts and feelings), attempts, and completions. Chapter 2, however, goes immediately and deeply into the land of statistics, including no fewer than eight more or less comprehensive tables detailing the rates of suicide in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, suicides from 1999 to 2014 enumerated by age categories from 5 to over 85, how the rate of suicide has changed since 1950, methods used, methods broken down by gender, and so on and so on. The text merely explains the tables, like a dull presenter annotating a PowerPoint presentation. This material should have been in an appendix instead of placed at the front of the book. It does nothing to address the needs of readers who came to this book because they have an urgent need to know how to deal with suicides or potential suicides at their home or school. In this chapter, a pattern is set in which absurdly dry academic speak ("Given that rates are established in age bands [i.e., 5-14, 15-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64, 65-74, 75-84, 85+], analyzing the particular prevalence rate by age can be considered historically and comparatively"), alternates with plain sentences of frustrating banality ("As this summary of the available data indicates, completed suicides are a reality of modern society.") The authors seem to realize that the best way to underscore a point can be to revert to plain language. But even then, they sometimes can't seem to avoid academic mannerisms: "When in doubt, do something (Cross et al., 1996)!"

Chapter 3 is titled "Expanding the Epidemiological Lens from Prevalence Rates to Correlates." This in a book that purports to be for general readers.

Middle chapters attempt to examine the risk factors that are associated with adolescent suicide and the particular personal challenges that may be faced by gifted students. Unfortunately, many of the risk factors, such as use of drugs, history of negative experiences at school, feelings of alienation, and similar categories are almost universal among teenagers.

This book may be of some help to those who are able to read selectively and skim over what they do not need. Each chapter, very appropriately, ends with a list of "key points" in plain language that help underline whatever point the chapter tried to make. (Unfortunately, many of the key points are pointless ["Suicide is an intentional act of ending one's own life"] of no interest to anyone not undertaking an academic examination of suicide ["Suicide ideation is a qualitatively different phenomenon among diverse age groups"].) A list of national and local resources in the back may also be helpful in a fix.

I don't doubt the concern and good intentions of the authors. But they should consider writing a book that can really serve as a helpful guide to educators and parents concerned and confused about how to prevent actual suicides that may occur. ( )

I've needed a good book on this topic all my life. Now, dear publisher, drop this one and get someone to write it.

I don't know when I first experienced suicide ideation -- but it was certainly in elementary school. The people I hang around with are very bright and very troubled -- I don't have a suicide attempt count, but I believe one of them has been in the hospital five times. And she is not the only one. I know very well the link between high academic skills and suicide.

Fortunately, I never had to work with anyone using this as a guide. Have these authors ever met someone who is suicidal? For that matter, have they ever met a gifted student?

Oh, and by the way, Drs. Cross, have you ever heard of autism?

That is not an idle question. A solid study shows that the suicide rate among high-IQ people with autism is nine time that population average. A slightly less rigorous but still pretty good study shows that the rate of suicide ideation is thirty to sixty times higher than the general population. And while people with autism are not necessarily intellectually gifted (forget TV shows like "Atypical" and "The Good Doctor"; the average IQ is about the same as the general population), enough of them are extremely smart as to make them a substantial fraction of those labelled "gifted." A book about suicide among the young which does not mention autism is about like a book on World War II that doesn't mention Japanese imperialism, Fascism, or Hitler.

On page 42, for instance, they give four reasons of why gifted students consider suicide. Every one of their four reasons is closely associated with autism; two are so strongly associated that they can be used toward a diagnosis.

OK, so let's re-title the book Suicide Among Gifted Children and Adolescents Who Don't Have Autism, Assuming You Can Find Any, Which You Probably Can't. Does that make it better?

I really don't think so. It's a short book, but it still manages to fall into several distinct parts that don't fit together. It starts with a study of suicide in general (it calls it a "history," but it isn't; it's an epidemiological examination). This has nothing to do with the gifted and talented, but it would probably be useful -- if you could trust it. I found that I couldn't. Errors ranged from the minor (p. 34, parents of the suicidal suffer from psychopathology, not, as the text says, psychopathy, which is when the parents have no willingness to follow the norms of society) to the baffling (the table of suicide rates by region on page 9 gives figures that can't possible average out to the alleged average; rates of suicide contemplation on p. 17 show fluctuations that are almost beyond belief). Maybe the data is right, but all those insane numbers need justification.

On page 35, we finally get case studies.

All of three of them. Out of thousands upon thousands of suicides a year, just three.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." And the case studies don't even give any real insight; they don't offer long interviews or journal entries or any actual insight into the mind of the person who died. (Maybe they were afraid of what those people would say about incompetent therapists?)

The next section is about the theories of suicidality. So, for instance, page 36: "Schneiderman's (1993) theory asserted that suicide attempts come from the desire on the part of the person to escape intolerable psychological pain." Yes, and the sky is blue, and the sun sets in the west, and anyone too stupid to know that is too stupid to be trying to help gifted children! Oy. Once again, the authors show no sign of ever having talked to anyone who experiences an urge to suicide.

With chapter 8 (p. 73), we finally get to techniques for presenting suicide. At least, that's what the chapter is called. But it doesn't offer techniques; it just mentions some models that have been implemented somewhere, without any real empirical evidence that they work. And it doesn't have much connection with the theories of suicide that went before it, so what do the theories matter?

On p. 89, they offer a model for emotional support. It's from 1963. In psychological terms, that's pre-civilization -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association hadn't yet reached its third edition, which was the first one based on science. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy didn't exist yet. Most practitioners were still Freudians. Freudians do more harm than good in cases like this. (I know from experience. There is also empirical data.)

I've ranted on too long. You can clearly tell that I think this a very bad, ill-informed book. This is a very important topic -- our gifted children are the people who will have to get us out of the messes our society is currently making of itself, and the last thing we need is for them to destroy themselves. Schools are very important in this regard -- they see the students regularly, and they don't look at the children with the sometimes-blind eyes of parents. We need books like this one. (Which is why I requested the book.) But we need books that can actually help parents and counselors and teachers understand their student's problems. This reads like it was written by a non-human. ( )

I'm giving this book 4 stars instead of 5 for the simple fact that I wish it were a bit longer and the concepts and ideas/suggestions were more expanded upon. This book has some amazing points and makes them clearly. However considering the short length of the book, I felt as though I was reading an information pamphlet instead of an actual text on the subject. I personally agree with nearly ALL the points brought up in this book especially in Chapter 8 when it is discussed that the true first line of high school suicide prevention lies within their fellow students. "Students often know before the adults do." 100% true! I love the suggestions given of how to reshape our high schools curriculums to not only teach suicide awareness to students, but also to better tailor said curriculums to be better suited and even more challenging for our gifted students who are at a different level than the majority. One other point this book makes that REALLY stood out to me was changing the stigma of intelligent, gifted children. Instead of putting them down, shunning them or just simply placing them with all the rest out of lack of knowing what to do for them, we should instead be encouraging them and even challenging them to do their very best at each grade level. All-in-all this was a great little read. ( )