The effectiveness of a group-based mindfulness intervention program on the mental health of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder
Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects important areas of growth and functionality of diagnosed individuals.Parents of children with ASD have increased mental health problems including anxiety and depression and have a poorer quality of life and psychological well-being compared to parents of typically developing children, including parents of children with other developmental disorders. Given the challenges experienced by parents, there is a need to develop and implement effective interventions that may strengthen their mental health. The aim of this research is to implement and examine the effectiveness of a group Cognitive-Behavior Therapy program based on mindfulness techniques that aims to reduce parental stress, anxiety, and depression and therefore to increase the well-being of parents of children with ASD. This program is called “Mindfulness Cognitive Therapy: An 8-Week Program to Free Yourself from Depression and Emotional Distress” by Segal, Williams & Teasdale (2014).This study uses an experimental design, with repeated pretest–posttest measures and a control group. A total of 50 parents of children with ASD will be recruited and randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 30) and control (n = 20) groups. The participants in the experimental group will be divided into two sub-groups, each of which will include 15 participants. First, participants will complete a sociodemographic survey designed by the researcher for this study.Second, to explore the possible effect of the intervention on participants’ mental health indicators (before-after intervention and 1 month later), parents must complete the following self-reported questionnaires: (1) Parenting Stress Index-Short Form [PSI-SF]; (Abidin, 1995), (2) Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale [DASS-21]; (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995), (3) Positive and Negative Affect Scale [PANAS]; (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), and (4) The Satisfaction with Life Scale [SWLS]; (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, & Griffin, 1985). For data analysis, repeated ANOVA measures will be used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention program on the dependent variables in three phases: before the intervention (T0), immediately post-intervention (T1) and 1 month later (T2; follow-up). All statistical analyses will be performed using IBM SPSS Statistics (version 25.0; IBM, Armonk, NY, USA). All statistical tests will be two-sided with significance defined as p < 0.05.
Keywords: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mindfulness, parents of children with ASD, mental health
