Specifics of stress factor perception and coping with them in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders
Keywords:
Ключевые слова: состояние скуки, склонность к скуке, Многофакторный опросник состояния скуки, психодиагностика, конфирматорный факторный анализ.Abstract
The specifics of the subjective estimation of stress levels, its interactions with anxiety, features of coping with stress and emotion regulation in the mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are considered. The study sample includes two groups of mothers of children with ASD (13 and 27 individuals), and two groups of mothers raising healthy children (12 and 26 individuals). It is shown that mothers bringing up children with ASD tend to rate the stressfulness of life events higher than mothers raising neurotypical children. The increase in the subjective estimation of stress for them is directly related to the anxiety in general and its components. Mothers of children with ASD with an emerging / formed emotional burnout syndrome tend to avoid stressful situations (anticipatory avoidance, avoidance inside a situation, ‘escape’ in cognitive analysis, avoidance of social interactions) to a greater extent compared to mothers with no signs of emotional burnout. Unlike mothers with neurotypical children, social support and self-approval do not provide protection against emotional burnout to mothers of children with ASD. The reasons for this could be both the specifics of bringing up a child with ASD, often associated with social exclusion and sense of failure, as well as greater severity of burnout syndrome.
Key words: autism spectrum disorders (ASD), mothers of children with ASD, parental stress, emotional burnout, coping behavior, emotional regulation.
* The research was supported by the Russian Foundation of Basic Research (RFBR), the scientific project No. 18-013-00925
