O impacto do diagnóstico de autismo nos pais

Abstract

Upbringing: The family is the primary social group, constituting a very important support for a person in order to facilitate his/her development, to form and learn to live in society. When a child is born with autism, the impact of the diagnosis in the parents makes the family life cycle changes, causing an additional strength for parents as they have to reorganize, to adapt to the family with a new reality. Objective: Evaluate the impact of autism diagnosis in the parents, analyze how the socio demographic, neonatal data and the way this have had influences when they have knowledge of that. Method: The research model used was a quantitative, descriptive and correlational type in an attempt to describe and analyze the relationships between variables. The study involved 69 parents with autistic children mostly female (65.2%), with a mean age between 41and16 years old, with younger mothers than fathers. To these results a questionnaire was administered to collect information on socio demographic data of parents and children, neonatal data, data on how they became aware of the diagnosis and a scale that assesses the impact of autism diagnosis in the parents. Results: The data show that the impact of autism diagnosis in the parents was reasonable. Overall, parents are still trying to overcome the initial shock and they all show a great concern about the future of their children. The adjustments and changes made in social dimensions are where parents have fewer difficulties. We also confirmed that the impact of autism diagnosis in the parents was higher in cases where there were risk pregnancies, in which there were difficult births and when they were alone when they had knowledge of the diagnosis. There were no statistically significant differences between the socio demographic data of parents and children in the impact of the diagnosis of autism.

Date of Award	10 Feb 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Rosa Martins (Supervisor) & Sofia Campos (Co-Supervisor)