Psychological characteristics and physiological reactivity to acute stress in mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder

Abstract

Stress related to parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder can differently affect caregiver's physiological reactivity to acute stress. Here, parental stress levels, psychological characteristics, and coping strategies were assessed alongside measures of heart rate, heart rate variability, and cortisol during a psychosocial stress test in mothers of children with ASD (M-ASD, n = 15) and mothers of typically developing children (n = 15). M-ASD reported significantly higher levels of parental stress, anxiety, negative affectivity, social inhibition, and a larger preference for avoidance strategies. M-ASD showed larger heart rate and cortisol responses to the psychosocial stress test. A positive relationship was found between parental stress levels and the magnitude of the cortisol stress response in both groups. The present findings indicate exaggerated physiological reactivity to acute psychosocial stress in M-ASD and prompt further research to explore the role of individual differences in mediating the effects of parental stress on physiological stress responses.

Mental Health and Resilient Coping in Caregivers of Autistic Individuals during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Findings from the Families Facing COVID Study

“…Conversely, state anxiety of the caregivers in our current sample was heightened when compared to reports using versions of the STAI (i.e. STAI and STAI-6) with caregivers of autistic individuals pre-COVID-19 (Conner et al, 2013;Pattini et al, 2019). This trend has also been observed in mothers of neurotypical children, who showed an increase in anxiety (measured with the STAI-6) during COVID-19 compared to pre-pandemic (Racine et al, 2021).…”

Behavioral Implications of the Covid-19 Process for Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Individuals' Comprehension of and Reactions to the Pandemic Conditions

“…Interruptions in behavioral and educational interventions may increase the ASD symptoms and behavior problems of individuals with ASD. Lastly, caregivers of children with ASD experience significantly higher levels of stress and anxiety compared to caregivers of typically developing children (18). Social support is shown to be a protective factor against stress in parents of children with ASD, where support from friends emerged as the most important factor, and support from significant others and family were less potent protectors (19).…”

Emerging biomarkers in autism spectrum disorder: a systematic review

“…Many studies have concentrated on cardiac measures such as heart rate variability (61) while other studies have focused on pupillary response (140) as measures of ANS biomarkers. Heart rate variability has been studied in adults (141)(142)(143)(144) and children (63,(145)(146)(147) with ASD as well as their caregivers (148)(149)(150) and has been associated with GI symptoms (146) and used as an outcome measure in clinical treatments studies (147,151,152). Given the multiple LOE 3b and 2b studies, heart rate variability has a GOR of B. Pupillary light reflex was studied in four prospective nonrandomized controlled studies of children with ASD (LOE 2b) ( 153) with one study linked these abnormalities to the severity of atypical sensory behaviors (154) and heart rate variability (155), and one study demonstrating the ability of pupillary light reflex parameters to accurately select a subgroup of 86.7-93.7% of the ASD participants with a 92.5-96.7% accuracy (156).…”