Twice-Exceptional College Students Narratives: When Giftedness and Mental Health Intersect

University of North Dakota UND Scholarly Commons Theses and Dissertations Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects January 2020 Twice-Exceptional College Students Narratives: When Giftedness And Mental Health Intersect Emily Dubord Hill Follow this and additional works at: https://commons.und.edu/theses Recommended Citation Hill, Emily Dubord, "Twice-Exceptional College Students Narratives: When Giftedness And Mental Health Intersect" (2020). Theses and Dissertations. 3099. https://commons.und.edu/theses/3099 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, and Senior Projects at UND Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UND Scholarly Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. TWICE-EXCEPTIONAL COLLEGE STUDENTS NARRATIVES: WHEN GIFTEDNESS AND MENTAL HEALTH INTERSECT by Emily DuBord Hill Bachelor of Arts, University of North Dakota, 2008 Master of Arts, University of North Dakota, 2011 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of North Dakota in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Educational Foundations and Research Grand Forks, North Dakota May 2020 i Copyright 2020 Emily DuBord Hill ii iii PERMISSION Title Twice-Exceptional College Students Narratives: When Giftedness and Mental Health Intersect Department Educational Foundations and Research Degree Doctor of Philosophy In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a graduate degree from the University of North Dakota, I agree that the library of this University shall make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permission for extensive copying for scholarly purposes may be granted by the professor who supervised my dissertation work or, in his absence, by the Chairperson of the department or the dean of the School of Graduate Studies. It is understood that any copying or publication or other use of this dissertation or part thereof for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to the University of North Dakota in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in my dissertation. Emily DuBord Hill May 4, 2020 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ……………………………………………………………….vi ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………………….vii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………….1 II. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………………………….10 III. METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………………..50 IV. FINDINGS …………………………………………………………..…75 V. DISCUSSION ………………………………………………………….125 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………140 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Deepest gratitude to my dissertation research chair and academic advisor, Dr. Marcus Weaver-Hightower, for his guidance, wisdom, and patience. Additional thanks to my dissertation committee, Dr. Joshua Hunter, Dr. Robert Stupnisky, and Dr. Yee Han Chu, for sharing their talents and perspectives in order to help advance my research and writing. To my parents and sister, thank you for your endless words of support and love that brought me to this point in my life and education. Lastly, I am grateful for all my participants who bravely shared their stories of what it is like to be a twice-exceptional individual. Your voices are moving and beautiful and inspire me to keep working to bring more of these stories into the light. vi ABSTRACT Gifted college students often arrive at universities with high GPAs and/or ACT/SAT scores. Their achievements in extracurricular activities such as in the arts, athletics, service, and leadership are well beyond the average student. To admissions representatives and faculty, these students look well-adjusted and successful on paper. However, many of these gifted college students come with unique challenges that go misunderstood, ignored, and underserved during their years in higher education— specifically involving their mental health. There are copious amounts of literature on gifted K-12 students and their mental health behaviors but very limited research done on the gifted college student population. Although gifted research declines after the twelfth grade, giftedness does not end as those students age. Along with being gifted, some of these individuals also experience mental health issues throughout their lifetimes. When giftedness and mental health overlap, the individual is considered twice-exceptional. Twice-exceptionality includes physical and learning disabilities, but the term can also describe a person who has a mental health diagnosis that coincides with their giftedness. Because twice-exceptional individuals tend to mask their mental health issues very well, it is difficult to identify that they need support—especially when they are in college. With my professional experience in honors education, I came to realize some of these twice-exceptional college experiences and stories have never been heard. The purpose of my dissertation is to bring these narratives into the light with the hopes of vii more widespread understanding of their specific needs. In order to understand the trends and challenges of twice-exceptional college students, I present a literature review as well as identify research gaps. Using a qualitative research design, I shape interview questions for my participants that illustrate their past experiences with growing up as twice- exceptional along with their present journeys as twice-exceptional college students. I use narrative and discourse analysis to bring their experiences and voices together in conversation with one another to give readers a clearer picture of what it is like to be a twice-exceptional college student. As a result of this analysis, my study culminates in better understanding the twice-exceptional student experience in terms of their behaviors, academic performance, social lives, and the intersectionality of their gender. My participants also gave insight into how universities can better support this student population through honors education programs, holistic academic advising, counseling and support groups, as well as more flexibility and understanding from university administration, faculty, and staff. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Growing up Gifted In 2004, I remember walking into my first college honors class feeling nervous about not being smart enough compared to the other students. I was considered the “smart girl” in elementary through high school, but I knew being part of a college honors program would be a completely different experience. I no longer would be the highest achiever in the class—a thought that was equal parts daunting and comforting. The honors students filled the classroom with lively discussion and critical debate over important topics that impacted the world around us. Instead of the professor lecturing, he treated the class as if it were a graduate seminar. We, the honors students, were primarily responsible for cultivating the active learning environment. That first honors class challenged us to develop our perspectives, fine tune our critical inquiry skills, and write for academic audiences. Some of us even experienced the difficult but important lesson of what it is like to receive a B on a paper—it’s not failure even though it feels like it. For the first time in my life, I felt like I found my “people.” Most of my honors peers were categorized as gifted during their K-12 education, whether it was from formalized testing or teacher recommendations for accelerated learning programs. As with many gifted and talented kids, we knew what it was like to be labeled as a “geek” or “nerd.” We were outsiders among other peers. The feeling of being an outsider manifested in various ways: bullied for being smart, isolated for being different, and 1 pressured to do well in school from internal and external forces. As the college years went on and close friendships formed, some of us discovered another commonality— many of us struggled with our mental health. We were high achieving students, but we were high achieving students with anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses. At that time, mental health was not something people spoke about freely with others—especially in the Midwest where the common mantra is still “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Most of the time, if we did talk about our mental health experiences, we expressed it in the form of feeling stressed about our academics and what graduate school applications we should fill out. A few of my college friends were diagnosed with mental health issues and coped with medication and therapy. Some later discovered they were on the wrong medication or misdiagnosed, which caused them to cope by using unhealthy amounts of alcohol instead. Others went undiagnosed due to cultural stigma of mental health interventions as well as the overwhelming feeling that if we are gifted/highly intelligent, we should be able to handle mental health on our own—essentially think our way out of it. Unfortunately, I was one of the gifted individuals who tried to control their mental health by overachieving through it. After researching gifted children with mental health as a doctoral student, I came to realize that I probably struggled with depression and anxiety even as a child and teenager. I was a typical gifted kid—walked early, read early, played with an overly vivid imagination, and excelled in various academic areas such as English, science, and music (Woolfolk,

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