Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: a systematic review

Background: Having a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder can affect family wellbeing and caregiver’s parenting skills. The present review aims to explore the main difficulties reported by parents of children with autism and the most used interventions to provide them support to date. Methods: 26 research articles published from 2006 to 2019 were selected and compared, specifically 10 quantitative and 16 qualitative studies, in which the following topics were discussed: parental stress in the presence of autism, presence of guidelines for intervention and relative difficulties to the achievement of the diagnosis. Results: The results of the review analysis indicate that parental stress is one of the difficulties in assuming a primary role. Parents caring for a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder have been shown to experience significantly higher levels of stress than parents of typically developing children. Conclusions: The presence of guidelines and the difficulties in achieving a diagnosis are closely related to the issue of parental stress, increasing or decreasing the perceived stress of parents