EMOTIONAL REGULATION AMONG PARENTS OF AUTISTIC CHILDREN: A DESCRIPTIVE STUDY IN PAKISTANI POPULATION

Abstract

Background

Emotional Regulation may help to prevent parents of children with disabilities from psychological anguish and to support their child's healthy development. In this study, we identify the variables that influence parents of Autistic children to employ both adaptive and maladaptive ER techniques.

Methodology

It was a cross-sectional survey design in nature because the research collected the data from the respondents at a single point of time, the researcher adopted non-probability purposive sampling technique due to being an unknown percentage of Autistic population in Pakistan. The sample size was 57. By adding 20% of drop out the estimated sample size was 70. Parents with at-least 1 autistic child, Age range was 20 years to 50 years, Divorced and Widowed was excluded. Data was collected on a structured questionnaire IIPB protocol. The questionnaire was already pilot tested and had been used in almost 60 countries across the world.

Results

N=70 parents, out of which 35(50%) were Fathers and 35(50%) were Mothers. The Mean Age of participants was 34.5±5.69. Emotional Regulation in parents was found out to be 39.24±16.79. The minimum emotional regulation was 7.00 and maximum score was 66.00. One of the sub-types of Emotional regulation, Reappraisal had a mean score of 23.40±10.35 with minimum score 4.00 and maximum score was 40.00. Suppression was another sub-domain of emotional regulation with mean score of 15.84±7.13 minimum score was 2.00 and maximum score was 27.00.

Conclusion

It was concluded that reappraisal and emotional regulation was more frequently employed by both parents.