Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is defined as a wide variety of complex developmental disorders that appear during the first 3 years of life. Parents of children with ASD reported more anxiety and lower levels of well-being than both parents of individuals without disabilities and individuals with other disabilities.
Objective: To assess the psychosocial impact of autism on the family of autistic children in Saudi Arabia.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in cooperation with the society of autism families, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. A self-administered structured and validated questionnaire was distributed online among parents of children with autism.
Results: In this study, we collected 122 responses to the validated questionnaire with response rate of 20.3%. Females represented 82.8% of the sample, while 48.4% of them reported that they had insufficient monthly income, while 40.1% reported that they had barely sufficient monthly income, and only 11.5% indicated having sufficient monthly income. Remaining, 12.3% of the respondents were males and 4.9% were sisters. Moreover, we found that 36.4% of parents had impaired quality of life (QoL), while 52.9% had moderate QoL and only 10.7% had indicated having good QoL. QoL of parents was not associated with gender, age, education level nor monthly income of parents instead it was negatively associated by severity of ASD.
Conclusion: Parents of children with ASD had some issues in their QoL; however this is mainly affected by the severity of ASD. These families and parents need educational programs, which is essential to improve their poor QoL. More assessments are needed to assess factors associated with poor QoL using interviews to increase efficacy of the tools used.
Key words: Autism, QoL, Depression, Anxiety, Parents
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