Pathways and Triggers Brought to Life 65father. “Here’s a kid with an IQ in the 140s, and he’s not
making it at one of the area’s top prep schools. He prac-
tically had a nervous breakdown over it. He had to be
hospitalized for a week because he tried to slit his wrist.”
“That sounds very serious and very scary. How is he
now?” the therapist asked.
“Lousy,” said the mother. “He has no self-esteem
left...he’s lost all faith in himself. And he doesn’t seem
to be able to complete any schoolwork at all anymore.
We think he’s depressed.”
“Where’s he going to school now?” the therapist asked.
“Our local high school,” the mother replied. “They’re
very nice there and everything, but we don’t think he’s
being challenged by the work, bright as he is.”
“Of course, there’s more to doing well in school be-
sides smarts,” the therapist said. “Can I take a look at the
testing you had done?”
The parents gave the therapist a copy of a psychoedu-
cational evaluation that had been performed when
Mitchell was in the seventh grade. The report docu-
mented a twenty-five-point discrepancy between his ex-
ceptional verbal skills and average nonverbal skills,
difficulty on tasks sensitive to distractibility, very slow
processing speed, and below-average written language
skills. But the examiner had concluded that Mitchell had
no difficulties that would interfere with his learning.
“This is an interesting report,” the therapist said.