Parenting Stress among Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders in Proyash, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Shamima Akther*
* Junior Consultant, Physiotherapy, Proyash Institute of Special Education
PISER JOURNAL | Volume 2 | Issue 1 | 2025
Abstract
The Autism Parenting Stress Index yields a wide range of stresses associated with parenting children with ASD. It concentrates on and highlights some of the key aspects of daily caregiving that are particularly difficult and stressful, such as behavioral and communicational problems. Indeed, the Index is apparently designed to tap into the more "stressful" aspects of ASD caregiving. The present study focuses on parents who were undergoing different level of stress when dealing with children with Autism Spectrum Disease. A total number of 111 parents of children with ASD, from Proyash, an Institute of special education and Research, Dhaka were purposefully selected for the study. In fact, 78.9% of the mothers displayed parenting stress that was clinically significant. This statistics really portrays the high psychological burden that not just these mothers, but likely other mothers too, have with parenting a child with ASD. And this is made even more salient when we consider the fact that the next main point discusses the dimensions and critical stressors that contribute to this parenting stress and also the disorder itself. The study's findings thus shed light on ways to seriously advocate for psychological and community-based support for the mothers of children with autism in Bangladesh. Access to adequate mental health resources, public knowledge about autism, and strong institutional support may do much to mitigate the stress that mothers in this context experience. This study adds to the scant literature on parenting stress associated with autism in South Asia, and it offers some important insights that are likely to be relevant to a range of individuals working to optimize family functioning in the context of autism.
Keywords: Parenting Stress; Mothers of Children with Autism; Autism Spectrum Disorder; Psychological Burden; Bangladesh.
