Effect of counselling intervention on stress and expressed emotions among family caregivers of children with autism

Parenting a child with autism represents an extraordinary challenge for families, resulting in prominent levels of stress and burden that subsequently affect their expressed emotions. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of counseling intervention on stress and expressed emotions among family caregivers of children with autism. The research used a pre-post interventional design, to evaluate 40 family caregivers of children with autism. The interviewing questionnaire assessed socio-demographic data, expressed emotions, and parenting stress, revealing that 57.5% of the evaluated family caregivers had severe stress pre-counseling, compared to 25% post-counseling intervention. Additionally, 80% of them had elevated levels of expressed emotions pre-counseling, compared to 32.5% during the post-counseling intervention. Most family caregivers of children with autism experienced significant levels of expressed emotions, and over half of them had severe levels of stress. However, these levels decreased following the implementation of the counseling interventions. Furthermore, there were highly statistically significant correlations between the total levels of expressed emotions and total stress levels among family caregivers before and after the implementation of the counseling intervention.