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Feelings of Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction in Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Birth Order and Perceived Social Support

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Abstract

Loneliness has been associated with several adverse psychosocial outcomes in childhood and adolescence. The present study aimed to investigate feelings of loneliness and social dissatisfaction in school-aged typically-developing (TD) siblings of children with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For this purpose, 118 siblings of children with ASD and 115 siblings of TD children and one of their parents participated in this study. Siblings of ASD-children reported higher levels of loneliness and social dissatisfaction than the controls. The hierarchical multiple regressions performed revealed that those feelings were inversely associated with being the first-born and with specific aspects of social support as perceived by the parent. The younger siblings of ASD-children seem to be in need of certain interventions beyond social support.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to all participating families and children, as well as ASD institutions, for their support with this study.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Special Education Laboratory, Department of Primary Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece

    Evangelia Koukouriki

  2. Community Centre for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, General Hospital of Thessaloniki “G. Papanikolaou”, 57010, Thessaloníki, Greece

    Evangelini Athanasopoulou

  3. Adult Psychiatric Unit, Department of Thessaloniki, Hellenic Centre for Mental Health and Research, Thessaloníki, Greece

    Elias Andreoulakis

  4. Centre for Educational and Counseling Services of Trikala, 2 Botsari str, 42132, Trikala, Greece

    Evangelia Koukouriki

Authors
  1. Evangelia Koukouriki
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  2. Evangelini Athanasopoulou
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  3. Elias Andreoulakis
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Contributions

E.K. devised the protocol of the study. E.K. and E.Ath. contributed to the acquisition of data, interpretation of the results and drafting of the manuscript. E.A. contributed to the statistical analysis, interpretation of the results and drafting the manuscript. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and critically revised the manuscript for important intellectual content. All authors have made a substantial contribution to the manuscript, have seen and approved its final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Evangelia Koukouriki.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclosure.

Ethical Approval

This study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The Research Ethics Committee of the University of Ioannina approved the study before the sample recruitment. Ethics committee approval (No. 1623/25-10-17) was also obtained from the Scientific Council of the General Hospital of Thessaloniki “G. Papanikolaou”, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Informed Consent

Informed verbal and written consent were obtained for all individual participants included in the study. Verbal consent was obtained for all children (9–13 years) then written consent was obtained from their parent or legal guardian. No data was collected in instances that children indicated objection to participation, even in instances of parental consent. There was no obligation to take part in the study and participants could withdraw at any point.

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Koukouriki, E., Athanasopoulou, E. & Andreoulakis, E. Feelings of Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction in Siblings of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: The Role of Birth Order and Perceived Social Support. J Autism Dev Disord 52, 4722–4738 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-021-05308-x

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