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Authors: Ahmed M. Megreya, Asma Al-Attiyah
Keywords: cognitive emotion regulation strategies, anxiety, depression, maternity, children with autism spectrum disorder, children with intellectual disability
Abstract: Parenthood is generally associated with a high level of stress. However, parenting, especially maternal parenting, a child with a disability is more stressful, in spite of the categories and severities of disabilities. In addition, the maternity of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may be concomitant with stress more than the maternity of children with other disabilities. The present study aimed to examine the impact of caring a child with ASD on the maternal use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies and mental health disorders (anxiety and depression) compared to mothers of children with intellectual disability (ID) or typically developing (TD) children. Participants were 90 middle-aged Qatari mothers of five-to-ten years-old children, who were TD or were diagnosed with ASD or ID. The results showed that mothers of children with ASD experienced higher anxiety and depression compared to mothers of TD children, but not mothers of children with ID. Maternal parenting of children with ASD was associated with less use of positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, and refocus on planning compared to mothers of TD children or children with ID. In addition, the patterns of associations between the cognitive ER strategies and anxiety and depression were generally similar across the three groups of mothers. Nevertheless, other-blame correlated positively with anxiety and depression only in mothers of children with ASD. Therefore, caring a child with ASD specifically or other developmental disability generally could have detrimental effects of the maternal use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies and mental health. Therefore, the present results provide very useful information for cognitive therapeutic techniques for maternal stress due to caring a child with ASD or another developmental disability.