The Relationship of Perfectionism, Rumination and Depression in Gifted Children and Adolescents: A Literature Review

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between rumination tendencies, perfectionism and depression variables in gifted children and adolescents. The high potential of gifted children in one or more areas can cause them to always want the best results and have unrealistic expectations (from themselves). This situation is defined as perfectionism. When perfectionist gifted children and adolescents, who have difficulty in coping with the idea of failure, cannot fulfill their expectations, they lose their intrinsic motivations and show increasing tendencies to demonstrate depressive symptoms. Researches show that gifted individuals with high perfectionism have high rumination tendencies. Rumination is defined as repetitive and non-adaptive thinking for negative situations. Individuals with ruminative thinking style repetitively think about negative life events however they have difficulty in taking action. When the perfectionist gifted children cannot fullfill their expectations, they develop ruminative thoughts for the negative situation and show depressive symptoms if they cannot cope with this situation. Discovery and usage of gifted children’s and adolescents’ ability is important both for themselves and the society. For this reason, it is important to determine the factors that may be an obstacle to these potentials. In order to protect and improve psychological health of these children, researches (literature) on this subject have been examined and brought together in this study