The Association between Parenting Stress, Positive Reappraisal Coping, and Quality of Life in Parents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Children: A Systematic Review.

Ni’matuzahroh Ni’Matuzahroh,Valendriyani Ningrum,Jui-Hsing Wang,Nida Hasanati,Muhamad Salis Yuniardi,Mein-Woei Suen,Widayat Widayat

doi:10.3390/healthcare10010052

Abstract

Parents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children generally suffer from poor coping and an impaired quality of life (QoL). This systematic review investigates parenting stress, positive reappraisal coping, and QoL in parents with ASD children. A literature search was carried out for publications written in English on the selected investigation topics using five databases, namely, Scopus, PubMed, Wiley, ScienceDirect Online, and EBSCO. Only studies investigating or measuring parenting stress, positive reappraisal coping, and QoL in ASD were included. Our results indicate that parents with ASD children have high stress levels. This is associated with the ineffective use of coping strategies and a low QoL. Adaptive coping strategies are related to a higher QoL, whereas maladaptive coping techniques are related to a worse QoL. Positive reappraisal coping is negatively correlated to meaningfulness, and it is used by parents to change their daily routines in order to motivate themselves towards new and evolving goals in life. Finally, we found a significant negative correlation between parenting stress, positive reappraisal coping, and the QoL of parents with ASD children. Positive reappraisal coping as a strategy helps parents adapt to stress and was found to be a potential mediatory function between parental stress and QoL.

Highlights

An autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition identified by medical criteria such as deficiencies in social communication and social interaction, and the existence of limited, repeated patterns of behavior, interests, or activities that may continue throughout life [1]
This study aims to investigate the association between parenting stress, positive reappraisal coping, and quality of life (QoL) in parents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) children
This study revealed the following factors had an important effect on parental stress: behavior problems and emotional impairments of the child, age, lack of respite care, several ASD children in the household, race/ethnicity, family communication, hopeful thinking, social support, life satisfaction, parenting self-efficacy, the children’s lability, negative impressions of parents, and daily positive affect [25,27,32,37]

Summary

Introduction

An autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental condition identified by medical criteria such as deficiencies in social communication and social interaction, and the existence of limited, repeated patterns of behavior, interests, or activities that may continue throughout life [1]. Parents with ASD children are key members of their ASD children’s health teams, and serve as the primary nurses for their ASD children [2] They may encounter more caregiving issues than parents of typical children, such as higher costs of therapy, childcare difficulties, locating therapeutic facilities that are reasonably priced due to a lack of clinical resources and governmental assistance [3], and preserving their socioeconomic status [4]. These problems can detrimentally impact the care of children with ASD, when these problems are coupled with parental health issues such as stress [5], anxiety disorders [6], and quality of life (QoL) [7]. The connection between factors affecting the well-being of parents with ASD children is not completely understood yet [15]

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