The Relationship between Stress and Coping Styles with Adaptive Behavior of Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children with autism spectrum face many problems with adaptive behavior and consequently parents are faced with more mental health problems. The goal of this study is to investigate the relationship between stress and coping styles of mothers and autism spectrum disorder with adaptive behavior in children.
The research design is the correlation-descriptive. The study population consists of all mothers and teachers of autism spectrum children enrolled in exceptional education and welfare centers in Golestan province. By in access sampling, 50 mothers and teachers of children with autism spectrum disorder are selected as samples. The research instruments include Wineland Adaptive Behavior Scale (1965), Lazarus and Folk man's coping strategies scale (1988) and Barry and Jones parental stress scale (1995) was. The data were analyzed using Pearson correlation and multivariate regression.
The results show that there is a significant negative relationship between maternal stress and adaptive behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder. Using problem-focused coping strategies has a positive and significant relationship with adaptive behavior of autistic children, but there is no significant correlation between using problem-focused coping strategies and maternal stress. However, emotion-focused coping strategies shows positive and significant correlation with maternal stress (p The adaptive behavior in children with autism spectrum is closely related to their parent's mental health. Therefore, the treatment and the stress which are caused by the children's problems can predict the adaptive behavior of the children with autism spectrum. Therefore, paying attention to the mental health of parents is very important.