Comparing the Effectiveness of Parent-mediated Intervention With Social Media-based and Face-to-face Rehabilitation Approaches on Autism Children’s Social Interaction and Challenging Behaviors: A None-randomized Quasi-experimental Study

Abstract

Background and Objectives: Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) often require various specialized services and access to various specialists in the fields of medicine, rehabilitation, and education due to the multifaceted problems caused by these disorders. Also, parents of children with ASDs face many challenges which expose them to high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as the quality of life (QoL) of these parents is often affected. As a result, it is necessary for children with ASDs and their parents, especially their mothers to access various services. The present study was conducted to investigate and compare the effectiveness of the parent-mediated intervention method with social media-based and face-to-face rehabilitation approaches for mothers of children with ASDs. Methods: The research sample included 30 mothers of 3-6-year-old children with ASDs who were randomly assigned to two groups of social media-based education and face-to-face education. Both groups received two training sessions every week for four weeks. The intervention for the first group was based on social media and using video calls, video, and educational texts, and for the second group, it was face-to-face. Results: The results showed that training was effective in improving social interaction and challenging behaviors in children and led to the improvement in depression symptoms, QoL, and sense of well-being in mothers; however the difference in the scores obtained from the two groups of social media-based education and face-to-face education is not significantly different from each other (P>0.05 Conclusion: According to the results of the research, it seems that the effect of the group interaction was significant in the time. Treatment as well as accessibility, choose one of the above two methods that are more economical for the individual according to the conditions, which requires further studies.