Mothers of Children with Autism Have Higher Parental Stress, Psychological Distress

[Guest guest]

http://www.newswise.com/p/articles/view/554086/

 

Newswise — Ask any mother and she’ll tell you that raising a preschooler is

no easy task. Now imagine what it must be like to bring up a child with autism

or a developmental delay.

Researchers at the University of Washington’s Autism Center asked mothers

about their experiences and found that moms of children with autism had higher

levels of parenting-related stress and psychological distress than mothers of

children with developmental delay. Children’s problem behavior was associated

with increases in both parenting-related stress and distress in both groups, but

this relationship was stronger in mothers of children with autism.

“Both groups of women are dealing with children who need high levels of

care-giving. But there is something about autism that is making a difference and

adding stress and psychological distress to these mothers,†said Annette

Estes, lead author of a new study and associate director of the UW Autism

Center.

Surprisingly, the research also found no link between a child’s decreased

daily living skills and increased parental stress and psychological distress.

“This finding was counterintuitive,†said Estes, who is also a research

assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “If a child has

more needs in getting dressed and in other daily living skills, that means the

parents are working harder and seemingly would be under stress. But it is not

the hard work that is stressing the mothers. Our findings really pointed to the

behavior problems that can occur with autism. Children with autism had

significantly higher levels of problem behaviors than children with

developmental delay.â€

These behavior problems included such things as irritability, agitation, crying,

inappropriate speech and not being able to follow rules.

For this study parental stress was defined as being the stress directly related

to a person’s role as a parent and parenting a child with a disability.

Psychological distress is more general stress, such as that experienced by a

person who is nervous about her job or life in general but may or may not be

confident about her parenting.

The study included 73 mothers and their children – 51 of the youngsters had an

autism spectrum disorder and 22 had developmental delays. The families were part

of a larger study exploring the neurobiology and developmental course of autism.

The children in the stress study were predominantly male, white and about 3½

years old when data was collected.

Parents filled out a number of detailed surveys that measured parenting stress,

psychological distress, problem behaviors and adaptive functioning level. The

last charted a child’s daily living skills in such areas as dressing, feeding,

using the toilet, bathing and helping with household chores.

The study, Estes said, looked at psychological stress, not psychiatric disorders

in mothers.

“We were not diagnosing disorders and our sample of parents likely did not

include the most distressed parents, those who did not have the resources to

take the time to participate in a research study or those who were probably too

busy and stressed raising a disabled child to participate.

She noted that problem behavior needs to be a crucial target in treating

children with autism and developmental delay.

“We need to focus on it because it appears to have the potential to disrupt

the family, parenting and the child. While problem behavior is not a core

element of autism, it might rise to the top of the issues that have to be dealt

with first in a clinical setting,†Estes said. “Help in what we call family

adaptive functioning is what we need to figure out in these cases. How to help

families is important because high levels of stress and psychological distress

can interfere with early identification of autism and interventions which are

delivered by parents. There’s another good reason to do this: Parents who feel

supported can better support their children.â€

The paper has been published in the online edition of the journal Autism and the

research was funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human

Development. Co-authors are Munson, an assistant research professor in

the UW Autism Center; Geraldine Dawson, a UW emeritus professor of psychology

who is now the chief science officer of Autism Speaks; Koehler, a

former UW biostatistics graduate student; and Xiao-Hua Zhou and Abbott,

UW professors of biostatistics and educational psychology, respectively.

 

 

Love, Gabby. :0)

http://stemcellforautism.blogspot.com/

 

" I know of nobody who is purely Autistic or purely neurotypical. Even God had

some Autistic moments, which is why the planets all spin. " ~ Jerry Newport