A CROSS-Cultural Comparison of Stress and Resilience Among the Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in India and the UK.

Background: The causes of stress for parents with children with autism and improving resilience are key research areas concerned with well-being and quality of life. Raising a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) involves unique challenges, and specific cultural challenges are often not considered in research (Freeth et al., 2014). Cultural factors may influence how autism is experienced, recognised and explained in diverse communities. For example, information that might be helpful for one parent may be too difficult or even unclear for another parent due to cultural differences including beliefs and values, socioeconomic status, religion and stigma. Factors such as perceived emotional support and parental attitude toward their child with ASD are also seen as contributors to stress and resilience and have yet to be studies cross-culturally.

Objectives: To compare parental responses to stress and resilience, and contributing factors, in a sample of parents with children with ASD drawn from the UK and India. We also tested two new factors relating to stress and resilience: perceived emotional support and parental attitude towards the child.

Methods: An online survey was conducted with 120 parents from the UK (Age M=38; SD= 5.9) and 120 parents from India (Age M= 40; SD=6.7) who have children with ASD aged between 3-16 years. Parents completed a set of online questionnaires about their experiences of caring for their child with ASD, their own perceptions of stress and resilience and their child’s current adaptive level of functioning. Measures included: The Vineland Adaptive Behaviour Scale (VABS), the Parenting Stress Index (PSI-SF), the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), the Perceived Emotional Support Scale (PES), the Family Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), and the Affiliate Stigma Scale (ASS).

Results: Parents in India reported higher levels of stress and lower levels of resilience than their UK counterparts even when matched on parental age, gender, socioeconomic status and occupation level. Indian parents also reported lower levels of perceived social support, higher level of negative parental attitude toward their child and higher levels of stigma. Of particular interest was the finding that Indian parents rated their child as having lower adaptive levels than their UK equivalents. In contrast Indian parents reported higher levels of perceived emotional support than the UK parents.

Conclusions: The findings indicate that the reported level of parental stress is higher in the Indian sample in our study. Factors that contribute to elevated stress and lower resilience among Indian parents included their child’s adaptive level, lower level of perceived social support, higher level of negative parental attitude toward the child and higher affiliate stigma. The data collected will be used to further develop a culturally specific model of stress and resilience. This research will help to develop new culturally specific strategies to provide interventions that will help parents overcome stress and enhance resilience. This research may also help to increase clinicians’ awareness and cultural responsiveness in order to support UK and Indian parents.