Socio-Demographic Conditions and Mental Health Outcomes of Parents of Children with Autism

Seema Saikia and Ramya Bhaskar
Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore

Pages:482-490

Caring for a child with autistic disorder is challenging for parents because it requires
extra effort to cope with daily life activities which can generate psychological
disturbances in their lives. At the same time, various socio-demographic conditions
are also likely to affect their mental health condition. Present study will help to increase
the power of parents to have encouraging and resourceful parenting which can be more
effective, helping them to enrich the social and emotional life of the ASD children and
themselves. The present study was designed to identify the mental health status of
parents having autistic children and to explore the socio-demographic predictors of
mental health. Data were collected from 143 parents of autistic children from Coimbatore,
Tamil Nadu. A mental health inventory was used to assess the levels of mental health
of parents and a self-constructed questionnaire was used to collect the sociodemographic
variables. The findings indicated that parents with autistic children were
found to have poor to very poor levels of mental health and the type of family indicating
nuclear and joint family was found to be the predictor. The study implies that parents of
children with ASD perhaps undergo stress in everyday life and the family support they
get in managing their responsibilities mostly affects their mental health status. The
findings deliberate on designing interventions including counseling aimed at reducing
stress and promoting positive mental health among the parents of autistic children