Introduction and aims: Autism is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder with
severe implications in behavior, communication and social interaction.
The aim of this study was to determine the family's functioning, emotional states,
coping strategies used by parents and life satisfaction among parents of children
diagnosed with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Methodology: A cross sectional co-relational study was conducted. The convenience
sample for this study was composed by 50 parents of children with ASD and 44 parents
of children without ASD. The instrument of data collection was composed by sociodemographic
data, FACES III (Olson, Portner & Lavee, 1985); EDAS 21 (Pais-Ribeiro,
Honrado & Leal, 2004), F-COPES de (McCubbin, Olson, & Larsen, 1987) and IBP
(Pais-Ribeiro & Cummin 2008).
Results
The results didn’t evidence statistical significant differences between both sample
(parents with and without children with autism) on the level of stress, anxiety,
depression, personnel wellbeing and coping strategies (p>0,05). Families with children
without autism report better levels of cohesion and adaptability than families with
children with autism (p<0,05).
Conclusions: We expect that a family with a child with autism would function
differently than families without such children. However, the results of this study
suggest that there are few differences between the types of families in this sample and a
normative sample
