Research On Resilience Of Parents Of Autistic Children And Its Correlated Factors

Resilience, which is the adapting well in the face of adversity and trauma, becomes a new domain in psychology when the Positive Psychology is prevailing widely at present. The problem how parents of autistic children (short as PAC) at risk can adapt well has drawn a lot of attention of the researchers. So it makes much sense to study the resilience of PAC.The purpose of this research is to find the stress, status and factors of resilience of PAC. In order to study how the autistic children impact on their parents negatively, 76 PAC and 125 parents of normal children (short as PNC) are measured on SCL-90 and FAD to investigate their status of mental health and family functions. With 629 PNC selected as a compare, the whole situation of resilience of PAC is evaluated by CD-RISC. And EPQ-RSC and basic information questionnaire are also asked to take by PAC in order to analyze the personality, demographics and children's factors and discriminate the risky and protective factors of resilience of PAC.The result indicates: 1. The revised CD-RISC scale has good reliability and validity, which can be applied in further research. 2. Compared to PNC, PAC have lower level of mental health and family functions. Mothers seem more vulnerable than fathers of autistic children.3. As a whole, the resilience of PAC is lower than the average of PNC significantly, while some PAC score high. 4. While PAC's demographics have no significant correlation with resilience, autistic children's states of illness and therapy play important roles on that. 5. The status of mental health, family functions and personality correlate to the resilience of PAC. 6. Among all factors discussed, the kid's age, the scores of Intravesion-Extravesion personality, Obsessive-Compulsive and Behavior Control function contribute most to PAC's resilience. 7. The psychological characters of PAC with higher resilience include (1) they have good status of mental health with low scores on Somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, anxiety and Photic anxiety. (2) Their family functions are excellent, especially on Communication and Affection Response functions. (3) They tend to characterize low Psychoticism and high Intravesion-Extravesion among personality factors.In conclusion, this research studied the status and correlated factors of PAC's resilience, and discussed the risky and protective factors, rich meanings of their resilience. Some practical suggestions were raised for the PAC's clinical intervention by discussing how the resilience positively effects on and enlighten mental health.