Otizm Spektrum Bozukluğu Olan Çocukların Anne-Babalarında Psikolojik Dayanıklılık ve Kardeşlerinde Duygu Düzenleme Becerilerinin İncelenmesi

Abstract

MUSTAFAOĞLU ÇİÇEK, Nuray. Investigation of Psychological Resilience in Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Emotion Regulation Skills in Siblings, PhD Dissertation, Ankara, 2019. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the experiences of parents of children with ASD in Turkey within the concept of resilience and to find out the factors that affect the level of resilience of parents. Moreover, emotion regulation abilities and experiences of healthy siblings of children with ASD aimed to be examined. For this purpose, a quantitative study was conducted to examine parents’ psychological resiliency and related factors in a total sample of 398 mothers and fathers; and a qualitative study was conducted to examine the experiences of nine mother-father dyads who were selected from parents with high psychological resilience.

In the quantitative study, the association among socio-economic levels, emotional state (stress, anxiety, depression levels), cognitive emotion regulation strategies and psychological resilience of the mothers (N=251) and fathers (N=147) of children diagnosed with ASD were examined via correlational and hierarchical multiple regression analyses. The results pointed out that parents experienced less depression, anxiety and stress as their psychological resilience increased. Also, parents who had high resiliency were more likely tend to use the cognitive emotion regulation strategies such as positive reappraisal and positive refocusing. Furthermore, the findings indicated that the psychological resilience level decreased as the tendency to catastrophizing and blaming towards others increased. In addition, there was a positive relationship between psychological resilience of the parents and their education levels, and family income. In this study, the relationship between children’s ASD related behavioral problems and psychological resilience of parents showed a significant negative relationship. The relationship between the psychological resilience of mother-father dyads (N=139), their cognitive emotion regulation skills and their emotional states was examined by the Actor-Partner Interdepended Model (APIM). The findings of the analysis showed that maternal acceptance of the diagnosis was not related to the emotional state of fathers, but that paternal acceptance of the diagnosis reduced the impact of depression on mothers. Furthermore, based on the mothers’ reports, the association between behavioral, and social problems and emotion regulation skills of healthy siblings (N=108) and the relationship among emotion regulation levels of siblings with maternal psychological resilience, cognitive emotion regulation and emotional states were examined via hierarchical multiple regression analyses. As predicted, the emotion regulation skills of the siblings were negatively correlated with their behavioral and social problems. Emotion regulation of children was predicted by the tendency of mothers’ using positive refocusing strategy in a positive direction, and putting into perspective in a negative direction. There was a significant correlation between anxiety levels of mothers and emotion regulation skills of healthy siblings.

In the qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the parents with high psychological resilience (N=9 couples) in order to understand the dynamics that facilitated psychological resilience. The contents of the interviews were analyzed by interpretive phenomenological analysis method. The main themes, which are related to being parents of children diagnosed with ASD, the sources of resiliency in this process and parental experiences with healthy child, were comprised as a result of the qualitative study.

The findings of the regression analyses and the themes based on the findings of qualitative study were discussed in the light of the related literature. In addition, the findings of quantitative and qualitative studies were comparatively interpreted, and recommendations for future research and practice were provided.

Keywords Parents of children with ASD, healthy siblings of children with ASD, psychological resilience, emotional state, emotion regulation skills, interpretive phenomenological analysis.