Effects of Written Emotional Disclosure on the Stress of Mothers of Children with Autism

Abstract

Background & Aims: Autism spectrum disorder is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder whose clinical manifestations include impaired social communication, behaviors, interests, and limited and repetitive activities. Poor eye communication, lack of emotion or social interaction, impaired use of non-verbal behaviors, and lack of age-appropriate communication are the main manifestations of this disorder. This disorder is one of the main causes of disability in children under 5 years old. The exact cause of this disorder has not yet been determined, and it can often be diagnosed by comparing autistic children's speech and performance with those of their peers. In comparison to parents of typically functioning children or parents of children with other developmental disabilities (i.e. Down's syndrome or cerebral palsy), parents or caregivers of children with an autism spectrum disorder experience more parenting stress which makes its management imperative. Parenting stress in this group of women results in depression, anxiety, divorce, reduced family cohesion and physical health, more incidence of behavioral problems in the children, and problems related to parenting. Thus, it is imperative to identify effective methods that target improvement in caregivers' mental health. The problems that mothers face in raising their children from an early age put a lot of pressure on parenting skills, and if the parents' understanding of the demands of their role is greater than the resources and methods available for coping with them, so that they will be unable to restore balance in the usual ways, it will lead to stress in parents. In the case of parents of children with autism, maternal stress is reported more than the paternal stress, and more than mothers of children with other developmental disorders and mothers of normal children. Therefore, given that the caregivers of (75%) of children with autism are their mothers, it is not unbelievable that mothers of this group of children struggle with a lot of stress. Mothers of children with autism are their primary caregivers, leading to depression, anxiety, quitting job, and suicide. Thus, effective interventions to improve the mental health of caregivers of children with autism seem necessary and the need to improve their mental health is felt. However, the results of studies that have been done so far indicate that this emotional revelation intervention through writing has been inconsistent or even ineffective on the mental health of mothers of children with autism. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of written emotional disclosure in parenting stress of mothers with autistic children. Material & Methods:In this study, conducted in 2019, a quasi-experimental design including pre-test, post-test, and control group was used. First, a sample size of 70 mothers with autistic children were selected and tested from the autistic schools in Tehran. In pre-test, the Parenting Stress Index-short form (PSI-SF) was administered individually to experimental group (n = 35) and control...

Investigating the impact of written emotion disclosure on the level of occupational stress among intensive care nurses

“…The results of the studies by Ebadi et al (2021) and Ashley et al (2011) also showed that the disclosure of written emotions caused an increase in stress in caregivers or did not have an effect on reducing the psychological distress of informal caregivers, which is not in line with the present study. This difference can be interpreted in such a way that people deeply understand their problems by writing down their feelings, and with the disappearance of mental distractions, they are more affected and thus experience higher levels of stress (Ashley et al, 2011;Ebadi et al, 2021).…”

“…In this regard, a study was conducted by Mirzazadeh et al (2015) which showed that holding debriefing sessions for describing stressful events can have a positive impact on nurses' moral distress. However, some studies reported different results, such as the study by Ebadi et al (2021), where it was found emotion disclosure through writing increases the stress among the mothers of the children with autism. It should be noted that other studies had different target populations such as the mothers of autistic children, and the type of events had been different as well; Mirzazadeh's study investigated the expression of stressful incidents.…”