Effects of Family Empowerment Training on Anxiety in the Parents of Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

Anxiety in families with an ill member can be induced by socioeconomic factors, i.e., a problem for the relatives, leading to anxiety in the family members. The parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) reported a high–tension environment at home. These parents present higher stress levels and lower psychological health status, compared to the parents of typically developing children. Research indicated that children with debilitating diseases can cause anxiety and tension in families, especially mothers. An approach to improve the psychological health and quality of life of patients and their families is to empower them in coping with the effects and complications of the disease and enable them to gain control over the disease and life events. The current study aimed to evaluate the effects of an education program to reduce anxiety in the families of children with ASD.

This was a quasi–experimental study with a pretest–posttest and a control group design. The statistical population consisted of all parents of children with ASD referring to the care center for children with ASD covered by the Welfare Organization in Kermanshah City, Iran. The research sample included parents who were eligible and willing to participate in the study. The study participants were selected by convenience sampling method. In this study, the number of required samples was determined as <90 subjects according to the sample size formula for interventional research. Accordingly, the study participants were randomly assigned into the test and control groups (n=45/group). The inclusion criteria of the study included the awareness of the child's diagnosis; the lack of critical bio psychological conditions once completing the questionnaire; no hearing or speech problems; being able to communicate in Persian; having a minimum literacy level; not attending similar programs while studying and in the past; living in or around Kermanshah, and desire to participate in the research. Individuals who were reluctant to cooperate and had known chronic bio psychological illnesses, including anxiety disorders were excluded from the study. Data collection tools in this study consisted of a researcher–made questionnaire, containing the demographic characteristics of parents participating in the study and the Beck Anxiety Inventory (Beck & Steer, 1990). The pretest and posttest steps were performed on all research subjects by Beck Anxiety Inventory. The intervention group received seven 30–minutes sessions in 3 months. Descriptive statistics, including mean, standard deviation, variance, and frequency tables, as well as inferential statistics, including Independent Samples t–test were applied for comparing the pretest and posttest results between the study groups in SPSS. According to the objectives of the study, frequency, mean, and standard deviation (descriptive statistics) as well as Kolmogorov–Smirnov test, Leven’s test, Paired Samples t-test, and Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) (inferential statistics) were used to analyze the obtained data at the significance level of 0.05.

The current study results revealed a significant difference in anxiety between the family empowerment training and the control groups at the posttest phase (p<0.001). The effect size was measured as 0.75, suggesting the difference between the study groups at the posttest was due to the family empowerment training. Therefore, family empowerment training reduced anxiety in the experimental group. Moreover, based on the results of Paired Samples t-test, there was a significant difference in the mean values of anxiety between the pretest and posttest phases in the experimental group (p<0.001); however, no significant difference was observed in the control group in this respect (p=0.091).

The present study findings suggested that anxiety management education for the families of children with ASD was effective and reduced anxiety in the intervention group.