Adolescents confront a plethora of physical and emotional changes, especially those alterations surrounding puberty. Body image disturbances have become commonplace with high school students, and school personnel seem to have had little success in fighting this problem. Teenagers with body dissatisfaction may also be at risk for mental health problems, such as depression and eating disorders. Gifted adolescents may be particularly susceptible to mental health issues due to a number of specialized issues including overexcitability and social coping ability (Gatto-Walden, 1999). The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship among body dissatisfaction, gender, type of student (gifted or typical), overall overexcitability, social coping, and an interaction between gender and type of student. A diverse group of 489 participants from six Illinois school districts participated in the study, including 268 females (54.8%), 216 males (44.2%), 4 students identifying as "other" regarding gender (0.8%); one student did not respond to that question (0.2%), and they ranged in age from 14 to 20 (M = 16.6, SD = 1.2). The overall regression model was statistically significant, F(5, 469) = 9.31, p < .001, R2 = .09. The adjusted R2 was .081, which indicated that 8.1% of the variance in body dissatisfaction was explained by the model. This effect was medium in magnitude and consistent with previous research with body dissatisfaction. The results support the idea that gender, overall overexcitability, and social coping significantly explained body dissatisfaction, but being gifted (i.e., type of student) did not significantly contribute to the regression model. In addition, the results did not support a gender by type of student interaction. These findings are interesting in that previous research has linked giftedness and overexcitability, but these variables were not strongly correlated in the current study. However, this information has yielded some important implications for school counselors, clinical mental health counselors, and counselor educators. The author also discussed some areas for further research.

Research taking the perspective of gifted children’s own experiences is scarce. To this researcher’s knowledge, there exists none regarding their pre-school years in the Swedish context. Therefore, this study attempts to meet this need of knowledge by presenting the voices of young gifted people’s lived experience of their pre-school years. The purpose ofthe present study is to explore the lived experiences of a few adolescents and their own conceptions and experiences of their pre-school years. Two research questions assisted my exploration of the material: What in the adolescents’ narratives appears as of significance to them? and What does it mean to experience pre-school for these gifted adolescents? Taking a phenomenologically informed approach, five semi structured interviews with informants aged 10-18 where conducted. Previous research on young gifted children has focused mainly on identification of gifted children. There are studies that put forward children’s experience of pre-school, but very few seek the experience of gifted children. Phenomenological theories also helped in analyzing the results, Ahmed’s queer phenomenology and Schütz view on the lifeworld and the social world were used. The results show that four themes were of most importance to the children; stimulation, influence, relations with peers and relations with adults, although it was also found that each individual had his/her unique experience. To some, experiencing pre-school meant for example loneliness and anxiety, while to others it meant playing with friends and positive feelings. By using the theoretical terms from Ahmed (2006) and Schütz (2002) it was found that in order to reach an oriented state, stimulation seemed necessary. Social relations with children or adults and learning activities at the correct individually adjusted level seemed to give stimulation. Influence, for example by being allowed to be different (queer), seemed to increase the possibilities to reach stimulation. When lacking both social relations and intellectual stimulation, orientation does not seem possible and sometimes causes a long-lasting disorientation or crisis. When lacking social relations some compensation from learning activities might be possible and as a consequence orientation in these moments. Implications of the study include, like previous research has found, the need of knowledge of giftedness and resources in pre-school to enable meeting the needs of all children, but mainly the contribution is that this study clarifies the great need of research in the area of gifted children’s own experiences of pre-school in order to better inform the practice.

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