Stress and self-compassion in parents of children with autism spectrum disorders.
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Date
2013-09-24Author
Lee, Crystal I.
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This past decade, the prevalence of children diagnosed with an autism spectrum
disorder (ASD) has increased from 0.6%-0.7% to 0.9%, meaning more families are
experiencing the stress of having a child with an ASD. Researchers found that levels of
parenting stress are consistently considerably higher in parents of children with an ASD
compared to parents of healthy children and parents of children with other disabilities or
health problems. This stress has several negative effects, such as poor parenting
behavior. Given that research has shown that parents’ beliefs about themselves affect
how they experience stress as well as their overall psychological well-being, addressing
how parents relate to themselves may be beneficial. This study explored the relationship
between stress and self-compassion in parents of children with ASDs as a first step to
finding a potential intervention for parental stress. It was found that levels of stress were
higher in parents of children with diabetes and parents of neurotypical children without a
chronic illness than in parents of children with ASDS. Levels of self-compassion in
parents of children with ASDs were lower than in parents of children with diabetes but
comparable to levels of self-compassion in parents of neurotypical children without a
chronic illness. Differences in stress and self-compassion were found to have a small to
medium effect size. A small, positive relationship was found between stress and self-compassion. Additionally, guilt was not found to be a mediator of the relationship
between stress and self-compassion.