Assessing the Burden and Coping Strategies of Parents of Adolescents with the Autism Spectrum Disorder

Adolescence is a unique life stage, both for the teenagers, facing physical and mental changes, and for their parents who must deal with the challenges related to their child's development and the disorder. This period, can represent a burden leading to exhaustion and deterioration of their psychological health. We aimed to assess the level of burden and coping strategies adopted by the parents and to investigate the associated factors. We conducted a cross-sectional study among parents of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder. The questionnaire collected sociodemographic information for both parents and adolescents, and included the Zarit Burden Inventory to assess caregiver burden as well as the Brief‑COPE to evaluate coping strategies.We included 43 parents with an average age of 50.6 years. Mothers represented 86% of the respondent (n = 37). The average age of the adolescents was 17.79 years. Male adolescents were predominant (sex ratio = 3.7). The parental burden was severely intense in 62.8% of the respondents. The burden was significantly associated to parents suffering from at least one somatic illness (p = 0.03) and those with more than two children (p = 0.02). Sibling rivalry was associated to severe level of burden (p = 0.04). Emotion-focused coping was the most commonly used mechanism by parents, followed by problem-focused coping and social support. A significant association was found between the level of burden and the humor-based coping mechanism (p = 0.02).Our findings highlight the necessity of supporting parents of adolescents with autism spectrum disorder to alleviate their caregiving burden and enhance their coping strategies.