Self-Compassion in Parents of Children with Autism: A Mixed Methods Approach

Abstract

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting 0.74% of children under the age of 7 in Australia. ASD is characterised by persistent impairments in social interaction and communication across different contexts, as well as restricted, repetitive behaviour, activities, or interests. Symptoms are usually present in the early developmental stages of life and cause significant impairment in social and other important areas of functioning. Parents of children with ASD are often highly stressed and experience poorer quality of life which has been associated with the additional challenges arising from parenting a child with ASD. Given that parental well-being has been shown to have a reciprocal relationship with child behaviour and child well-being, identifying potentially modifiable factors which can reduce parental stress and improve quality of life may have broader clinical benefit. One potential factor that has been relatively unexplored is self-compassion. Self-compassion generally refers to the nonjudgemental awareness of suffering whilst meeting this suffering with acts of self-kindness. This thesis investigated self-compassion using a mixed methods approach examining whether self-compassion could extend from a theoretical contribution to practical implications in mothers of children with ASD, using mixed methods. The aim of the first study was to test an extended ABCX model of adaptation by including an additional internal resource variable, self-compassion, to examine the potential contribution to the model. A self-report questionnaire was administered to 139 parents of children with ASD. Findings from this study suggest the negative dimension of self-compassion was related to greater parental stress, whereas the positive dimension of self-compassion was related to greater quality of life. The aim of the second study was to examine the daily encounters of parents with stress and self-compassion using semi structured interviews from 19 mothers. This study provided evidence relating to the impact and causes of stress, the benefits of self-compassion, the barriers to self-compassion, and the aids to self-compassion. The second part of the interviews gathered information regarding parents’ needs, goals, and preferences that subsequently informed a socially valid intervention for parents. Lastly, the third study of this project served as a proof-of-concept study, where three parents participated in a 4-week self-compassion-based intervention. The intervention was informed by the data collected in studies 1 and 2 as well as the Centre of Clinical Intervention Self-Compassion modules. Three mothers ages 30-48 years attended four, 2-hour sessions. This study found a self-compassion intervention to be socially valid and effective in improving parent outcomes, including an increase in self-compassion, decrease in parenting stress, depression, anxiety, and stress, and better quality of life. Understanding potential modifiable factors that may improve parent well-being is particularly important in parents of children with ASD, who tend to report higher stress and poorer quality of life.