The effect of early family-centered intervention on stress syndrome in the mothers of children with autism

The parents of children with autism face severe stress and suffer from psychological problems due to specific conditions of their children. The present study investigated the impact of early family-centered intervention on stress syndrome in the mothers of children with autism. The research method was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design and control group. The participants included 30 mothers of children with autism in Kermanshah who were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. The early family-centered intervention was presented to the experimental group. Stress Symptom Inventory was used to collect data and covariance analysis was applied to analyze the data. After intervention, the scores of the two groups of mothers were significantly different (p<0.05) and the stress syndrome was significantly reduced in the experimental group. Considering Eta-squared value, it can be concluded that 56% of these changes occurred as a result of the effect of intervention. The finding indicated that the early family-centered interventions lead to improved stress symptoms among the mothers of children with autism.