Spiritual counseling and guidance needs of families with a child with autism

The aim of this study is to determine what kind of psycho-social and spiritual situations families with autistic children experience after the diagnosis, how they try to overcome these situations in their inner world, to determine the religious/spiritual needs of the parents, to reveal the determinations regarding the need for spiritual counseling and guidance. and offer solutions. The research consists of a total of 27 parents, including 22 mothers and 5 fathers, whose child living in the Antalya provincial center was diagnosed with autism and declared voluntary participation in the research. In the research, the situation pattern was preferred from the qualitative research methods, a demographic information form and a 14-item question form were prepared within the framework of the semi-structured interview technique as a data collection method. The obtained data were sorted by content analysis and descriptive analysis techniques. As a result of the research, it was found that parents with a child with autism felt the need for support, and the vast majority of participants resorted to the method of coping with religion and making sense of their religious belief. Participants expressed that issues such as patience, challenge, gratitude, rebellion against Allah, suicide, forgiveness, why this happened to me, the rewards of disabled families and disabled people in the hereafter are important for them in their spiritual counseling and guidance needs. It was stated that the social support mechanisms of the participants were low, they felt the need for moral support, especially starting from the first six months of diagnosis, they could not enter public places and became lonely, their quality of life decreased, their well-being should be supported, they wanted to make sense of the causes of autism with religious and spiritual references, so they needed spiritual counseling and guidance found. It was found that home visits were important in order to support the participants, mothers were more interested in the child in terms of caring for the child, needed spiritual counseling and guidance more. It was concluded that the participants applied the most religious and spiritual coping and meaning-making methods in the coping and meaning-making processes, therefore, they wanted to carry out these processes through a spiritual counselor. In the professional support and counseling services to be provided for the family of the child with autism, it has been seen that it is important to include the spiritual counselor in the process according to the needs of the client.