Chronic Parenting Stress in Parents of Children with Autism: Associations with Chronic Stress in Their Child and Parental Mental and Physical Health

Parents of children with ASD often demonstrate high levels of stress and associated health problems. A gap in knowledge exists regarding the associations between chronic stress and mental and physical health of parents of young children with ASD, in which fathers have been understudied. In 181 parents (98 mothers, 83 fathers) of 99 young children with ASD chronic stress was measured using parental self-report and hair cortisol concentration (HCC) analysis. Parental mental health and eating behavior was measured using questionnaires. Physical health was evaluated by Body Mass Index, waist circumference, blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and glucose.. Parental HCC was related with child HCC (r(mothers) = 0.51, p <.01; r(fathers) = 0.40, p <.01). Maternal HCC was associated with lower reported parenting stress (r = -.33, p <.01). Parental mental health problems and reported parenting stress were strongly related (r =.55-0.61, p <.01). Mental health problems were twice as frequent as in the norm-population (41.1-45.8% versus 20%). In both parents, reported parenting stress was associated with emotional eating behavior. HCC was associated with higher glucose levels in mothers. There were no associations between chronic stress and the other physical health measures in mothers and fathers. Parents of young children with ASD are at high risk for chronic stress, with impact for their mental and physical health. Additionally, chronic stress of parents, cannot be perceived isolated from the stress in their children with ASD. We encourage future research to investigate whether these correlations are generalizable to the whole ASD population.