Family Empowerment, Acceptance, and Crisis In Families of Children with ASD

Background: Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) experience a wide range of acute and chronic stressors, heightening their risk for an experience of crisis. Understanding the processes that lead to stress, distress, and mental health problems in mothers of children with ASD is necessary if we are to mitigate the experience of crisis. Empowerment, defined as “ …an intentional, ongoing process…through which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain greater access to and control over those resources” (Cornell Empowerment Group, 1989, p. 2), is one variable that may affect the experience of crisis in families with ASD. Previous research indicates that empowerment contributes to better outcomes in families (e.g., Scheel & Rieckmann, 1998). Another variable that may mitigate an experience of crisis is psychological acceptance, which is related to decreases in parental stress, depression, and anxiety in families of children with intellectual disabilities (Lloyd & Hastings, 2008).

Objectives: The purpose of the present study is to examine the relationship between empowerment, psychological acceptance, and crisis in families of children with ASD. It is hypothesized that a change in empowerment and acceptance will be correlated with a change in the experience of crisis in families of children with ASD overtime.

Methods: As part of a large Canadian online survey of children with ASD, 145 mothers of children diagnosed with ASD aged 3-21 years old (115 boys and 30 girls; age M= 12.19, SD=4.44) completed the Family Empowerment Scale (Koren et al., 1992), which assesses the family’s ability to handle day-to-day situations, and the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (Bond et al., submitted), which measures acceptance of difficult thoughts and emotions.  Mothers also completed a crisis measure, which asks mothers to rate their degree of current crisis on a 10-point scale (ranging from ‘0 – Not at all in crisis’ to ‘10 – We are in crisis and it could not get any worse’) (Weiss & Lunsky, in press). The measures were completed at two different time points with approximately one year in between. Child diagnoses included Asperger syndrome (32%), PDD-NOS (17%), Autism (49%), and other diagnoses (1%; 1% were missing).

Results: Preliminary analyses revealed that family empowerment and psychological acceptance are associated with crisis. Mothers who reported more family empowerment were less likely to be experiencing distress (r = -.31, p <.001). Mothers who reported more psychological acceptance were also less likely to be experiencing distress (r = -.40, p <.001). Regression analyses will be conducted to determine whether changes in empowerment and psychological acceptance are related to a change in crisis over time.

Conclusions: The importance of empowerment and psychological acceptance as targets for psychological interventions to alleviate crisis in families of children with ASD will be discussed.