Mental Health and Parenting Style of Parents of Children with Autism

Abstract

The objectives of the present study were to compare the mental health state of parents of children with autism and those of having normal children and to explore parenting style of parents. To conduct the study, a total of 140 parents (mothers=70 and fathers=70) were selected purposely and conveniently as respondents. Among of them 70 parents (father= 35 and mother= 35) who were children with autism and rest of them (father= 35 and mother= 35) were the parents of normal children. Data were collected from respondents by using translated versions of the Symptoms Checklist (SCL-90) and Parenting Styles and Dimensions (PSD) questionnaires. The obtained data were analyzed by using Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, the two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). The results indicated that mental health of parents having children with autism was worse than that of parents having normal children. Compared to parents of children without autism, parents of autistic children had higher level of anxiety, depression, and interpersonal sensitivity. In comparison to those who have children without autism, they also experience greater somatic complaints, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anger problems, phobic anxiety, paranoid thoughts, and psychotic symptoms. The findings also indicated that mothers' mental health was more fragile than fathers' mental health, whether they had children with autism or not. The three parenting styles of authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive parenting were assessed using the PSDQ. The authoritative parenting style was shown to have the highest mean score and usage rate among the three parenting styles, suggesting that parents of children with autism favour it more than parents of children without autism. In a similar vein, mothers' mean scores are higher in authoritative parenting than fathers' average scores regardless of whether their children have autism or not.