Abstract
Objectives
Research shows that stigma has an adverse psychological impact on parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, there are very few studies examining the potential protective factors that may buffer the adverse impact. The present study investigated the longitudinal associations of experienced discrimination and anticipated discrimination with detrimental cognitive consequences (i.e., self-stigma content and self-stigma process) and affective consequences (i.e., parenting stress and depressive symptoms) for parents of children with ASD and tested whether these associations would be moderated by nonattachment.
Methods
At two time points separated by 24 months, 381 Hong Kong parents of children with ASD completed standardized questionnaires to provide data on experienced discrimination, anticipated discrimination, nonattachment, self-stigma content, self-stigma process, parenting stress, and depressive symptoms.
Results
Hierarchical regressions showed that experienced discrimination and anticipated discrimination had significant interactions with nonattachment at baseline in predicting adverse psychological consequences (i.e., self-stigma content, self-stigma process, parenting stress, and depressive symptoms) at follow-up. In addition, simple slope analyses showed that the associations of experienced discrimination and anticipated discrimination with the adverse psychological consequences were weaker in parents with high nonattachment than in parents with low nonattachment.
Conclusions
Our findings indicate the longitudinal associations of experienced discrimination and anticipated discrimination with detrimental cognitive consequences and affective consequences for parents of children with ASD, and highlight the protective effects of nonattachment against such associations. These findings suggest the importance of supporting parents of children with ASD to increase nonattachment in order to cope with discrimination and improve psychological well-being.
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Data Availability
The data of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following autism service centers and special schools (in alphabetical order) for facilitating us in recruiting eligible participants from their service users: Buddhist To Chi Fat She Yeung Yat Lam Memorial School; Caritas Lok Jun School; Caritas Lok Kan School; Caritas Resurrection School; Choi Jun School; Church of Christ in China Kei Shun Special School; Haven of Hope Sunnyside School; HHCKLA Buddhist Po Kwong School; Hong Chi Lions Morninghill School; Hong Chi Morninglight School, Yuen Long; Hong Chi Pinehill No.2 School; Rotary Club of HK Island West Hong Chi Morninghope School; The Boys’ & Girls’ Clubs Association of Hong Kong; The Mental Health Association of Hong Kong Cornwall School; The Parents Association of Autistic Children in Mainstream Education; The Parents’ Association of Pre-School Handicapped Children; Tung Wah Group of Hospitals Tsui Tsin Tong School; and Yuk Chi Resource Centre.
Funding
This study was funded by the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Project Number: 18611917).
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KKSC developed the research question, analyzed the data, and wrote and revised the paper. CCHY and ZW collaborated in writing and revising the paper. All authors approved the final version of the paper for publication.
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This study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee of The Education University of Hong Kong.
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Chan, K.K.S., Yip, C.C.H. & Wang, Z. Nonattachment Alleviates the Longitudinal Impact of Experienced and Anticipated Discrimination on Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Mindfulness 13, 1733–1744 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01911-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-022-01911-w