Evaluation of the relationship between the time of first diagnosis, disease severity, perceived social support by parents and parental quality of life among children and adolescents diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder

Aim: In this thesis, it is aimed to examine the relationship between the first time of diagnosis of children with ASD, the severity of the disease and the social support perceived by the parents and the life quality of their mothers. Method: After obtaining the approval of the ethics committee, 97 children between the ages of 2-18 and their parents (mothers) who applied to Aydın Adnan Menderes University, Department of Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Diseases between January 2020 and November 2020 and who meets DSM-5 diagnostic criteria were included in the study. All children who met the inclusion / exclusion criteria determined for ASD case groups and whose consent to participate in the study was evaluated by the researcher child psychiatrist with a DSM-5 based diagnostic psychiatric interview and they have been diagnosed with ASD and / or their diagnosis has been confirmed. Following the diagnostic verification, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) was administered by the investigator child psychiatrist, using clinical observation and family reports. Subsequently, the parents of the case groups were asked to fill out the sociodemographic data form, Symptom Checklist-90 Revised, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Quality of Life in Autism Questionnaire- Parent Version (QoLA) Results: In terms of age of diagnosis among children in both case groups in our study; it was determined that those in the severe ASD group were diagnosed at a later age compared to the mild ASD group, but there was no significant relationship between the age of diagnosis and the parental quality of life (p = 0.063). It was found that there is a significant relationship between disease severity and parental quality of life scores (p = 0.010). A significant relationship was found between the perceived social support scores of the mothers of the case groups and the parental quality of life scores (p = 0.001). No significant difference was found between subgroups in the SCL-90-R (Symptom Checklist-90 Revised) scale, which evaluates psychiatric symptoms in the parents (mothers) of the groups (p = 0.277). When the mean quality of life score was compared with the subgroups in the SCL-90-R scale, in addition to the somatization symptom it was found that there was a significant relationship between the subgroups of Anxiety, Obsession, Depression, Interpersonal Sensitivity, Psychotic, Paranoid, Anger, Phobia, Additional symptoms and quality of life. There was no significant difference between the BDI and BAI scale scores that measure depression and anxiety symptoms in the parents of the groups (p = 0.287, p = 0.366). A significant correlation was found between the mean quality of life score and the beck depression and beck anxiety scale scores of the mothers of children in both groups (p = <0.001, p = 0.013). The results of our study show that the mothers of children with mild-moderate autism have higher quality of life scores compared to the mothers of children in the severe ASD group, and this difference is statistically significant (p = 0.001). Conclusion: We think that our study will contribute to the literature since it is the first study to evaluate the relationship between the time of first diagnosis, disease severity, perceived social support and the quality of life of their mothers in children with ASD. In our study, a significant negative relationship was found between disease severity and parental quality of life scores of the case groups. However, no significant difference was found between the time of diagnosis and the quality of life of the parents in the case group. A significant positive correlation was found between the perceived social support scores of the mothers and the parental quality of life scores in both case groups. In addition, in our study, the mean quality of life score of mothers with children with severe violence was found to be significantly lower than the mothers in the mild-moderate ASD group. Community-based, repetitive studies with larger samples are needed to generalize the findings obtained from our study. Key Words: Autism spectrum disorder, time of diagnosis, disease severity, perceived social support, mental symptom, parental quality of life, mother Contact: ismet.ashik@gmail.com