| Parents of children with autism often require special care from others due to their unique characteristics,and therefore,parents of children with autism bear more parenting burdens and face more difficulties and stress than parents of typical children.Parents of children with autism have more severe mental health problems than parents of other special children.Therefore,it is necessary to pay more attention to the physical and mental health status of parents of children with autism and to study their mental health state and the factors influencing it.This study has unique implications for helping them to improve their mental health by combining external factors(children’s autism symptom levels)and internal factors(parental needs,parental burnout)to examine the mechanisms that influence parents’ mental health.The study mainly used the Childhood Autism Rating Scale,The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale,the Chinese version of The Family Needs Survey and Parental Burnout Assessment to survey 495 parents of children with special needs in Guangzhou,in order to investigate the mechanisms of the role of parental needs and parental burnout in the relationship between children’s autism symptom levels and parents’ mental health.Moreover,we had further examined whether the relationship between parental needs,parental burnout and mental health influenced by the types of children’s disorders.Analysis of the results showed that:(1)children with autism whose families had a monthly income of less than 4,000 yuan had significantly higher symptom levels than children from families with other income levels,and there were no significant differences in children’s symptom levels on children’s gender;parental needs,parental burnout,and parental mental health did not differ significantly on children’s gender,parent’s gender,parent’s education,and monthly family income;(2)There were significant positive correlations between children autism symptom levels,parental needs,parental burnout,and parental mental health;(3)Children autism symptom levels was a significant positive predictor of parental mental health problems;(4)Parental needs and parental burnout showed a complex mediating relationship between children autism symptom levels and parental mental health,with significant independent and chain mediating effects.(5)The mediating relationship between parenting burnout in parental needs and parental mental health was not affected by the types of children’s disorder.Based on the results,this study suggests that it is necessary for the society,schools and families to provide adequate support and assistance to parents of children with special needs,providing sufficient resources to meet their parental needs.So that parents can better cope with the difficulties caused by children’s disorder problems,reduce parental burnout and improve their physical and mental health. |
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