Emotional Empathy Mediates the Relationship between Mental Health of Parents of People with ASD and the Autistic Symptomatology of the Care Recipient

Ruiz-Robledillo N Romero-Martínez A

doi:10.4172/2090-7214.1000191

Abstract

Caring for people with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been reported to have a negative impact on the caregivers’ health. One of the most studied risk factors is the severity of the autistic symptomatology of the care recipient, greater severity of symptoms having been associated with poorer health outcomes in caregivers. However, to our knowledge, no studies have evaluated the role of empathy of the caregivers in this association. This study aimed to explore the possible mediating effect of both cognitive and emotional components of empathy in the relationship between autistic symptoms of the care recipient and caregiver depression and anxiety in 76 caregivers of people with ASD. Only personal distress mediates the association with anxiety, while both components of emotional empathy, personal distress and empathic concern, mediate the relationship between autistic symptoms and depressive symptomatology. In both cases, high scores in empathy were related to high levels of symptomatology. These results have implications for clinical practice, in that evaluating empathy in caregivers could help to foresee and hence take measures to prevent psychological disorders in this population.

Highlights

Caring for offspring with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has negative consequences for the caregivers’ health [1,2,3]
This study aimed to explore the possible mediating effect of both cognitive and emotional components of empathy in the relationship between autistic symptoms of the care recipient and caregiver depression and anxiety in 76 caregivers of people with ASD
Autistic symptoms and empathy as predictors of depression and anxiety in caregivers In order to evaluate the direct association between autism severity and depression and anxiety, two hierarchical regression models have been constructed for depression and anxiety separately

Summary

Introduction

Caring for offspring with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has negative consequences for the caregivers’ health [1,2,3]. The most studied risk factors have been those associated with the care recipient, behavior disruption and the severity of autistic symptomatology [6,7,8,9,10,11] These two variables related to the functionality of the offspring have shown to be the best predictors of stress [8], depression [12] and anxiety in caregivers [10]. No studies have analyzed the effects of caregiver empathy, which can be divided in cognitive (the intellectual ability to identify the feelings and thoughts of others) and emotional empathy (sharing the emotional experience of another person) [18, 19] In this regard, Monin and Schulz proposed caregivers empathy as a one of the principal mediators in the association between symptomatology of the care recipient and emotional disorders in caregivers [20]. We expected to find a stronger mediating effect from the components of emotional empathy, than those of cognitive empathy [25]

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