Famílias com e sem filhos autistas : funcionalidade, estratégias de coping familiar e bem-estar pessoal

Introduction and aims: Autism is considered a neurodevelopmental disorder with severe implications in behavior, communication and social interaction. The aim of this study was to determine the family's functioning, emotional states, coping strategies used by parents and life satisfaction among parents of children diagnosed with and without autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Methodology: A cross sectional co-relational study was conducted. The convenience sample for this study was composed by 50 parents of children with ASD and 44 parents of children without ASD. The instrument of data collection was composed by sociodemographic data, FACES III (Olson, Portner & Lavee, 1985); EDAS 21 (Pais-Ribeiro, Honrado & Leal, 2004), F-COPES de (McCubbin, Olson, & Larsen, 1987) and IBP (Pais-Ribeiro & Cummin 2008). Results The results didn’t evidence statistical significant differences between both sample (parents with and without children with autism) on the level of stress, anxiety, depression, personnel wellbeing and coping strategies (p>0,05). Families with children without autism report better levels of cohesion and adaptability than families with children with autism (p<0,05). Conclusions: We expect that a family with a child with autism would function differently than families without such children. However, the results of this study suggest that there are few differences between the types of families in this sample and a normative sample.