An investigation on the life satisfaction, family functions and learned helplessness of parents whose children have been diagnosed with autism and receiving education in rehabilitation centers

This research was conducted in order to investigate the life satisfaction, family functions and learned helplessness levels of parents whose children have been diagnosed with autism and have been receiving education in rehabilitations centers. The population of the research was made up of parents whose autistic children were attending to special education institutes in the city of Istanbul. The sample of the research was the parents of children who have been diagnosed with autism and who have received a report from "Rehberlik Arastirma Merkezi (RAM)" and have been attending to one of the special education centers; "575 parents were randomly selected from this pool. The gathering data were accomplished Life Satisfaction Scale, Rosenbaum Learned Helplessness Scale and Family Assesment Scale. In addition to these, a personal information form that was developed by the researcher of this article was used. The data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) for Windows 21.0. During the assessment of the data descriptive statistical methods (number, percentage, average, and standard deviation) were used. Spearmen Correlation Analysis was used to measure the level of correlation between the scales used in the analysis. The analysis revealed that no significant difference is affected by the parents' income levels, marriage durations and the duration of the special education which has been received. However life satisfaction, learned helplessness, communication levesl, emotional response abilities and family assessment levels showed significant difference. When the parent's age and education level was investigated, a significant difference was observed in problem solving, communication, ability to respond emotionally, family assessment scale and mood control. As the education levels increased, life satisfaction was observed to increase..The sequence of birth of the autistic child showed a significant difference in life satisfaction, emotional response ability, family assessment scales and learned helplessness levels.The age of diagnosis also revealed significant difference in planned behaviour, life satisfaction, problem solving ability, communication and emotional response abilities. Finally, learned helplessness levels were inversely correlated with both life satisfaction and family assessment scale values.