Mothers of Autistic Children Face Added Stress
by Bruce Bower, originally posted on ScienceNews
Mothers with teenagers or young adults living at home face plenty of stress. If the young home-dwellers have been diagnosed with autism, the emotional intensity of caregiving surges dramatically in the mothers and may undermine the functioning of a critical stress hormone, a long-term study suggests.
Over a five-year span, women who had children with autism living at home reported many more challenges in their daily lives than women caring for typically developing teens and young adults, reported psychologist Marsha Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin–Madison on June 4 at the annual meeting of the Jean Piaget Society. Moms of children with autism spent nearly all of their time on caregiving activities, experienced an inordinate amount of daily fatigue, often got into arguments at home and at work, and reported having negative feelings far more often than positive ones.
Analyses of saliva samples collected from women near the end of the study period showed that those caring for offspring with autism produced unusually low levels of the stress hormone cortisol throughout the day. In mothers caring for teenage or young adult children free of developmental problems, cortisol levels rose sharply throughout the morning and then declined to a level that still remained well above that of mothers tending to kids with autism.
Continue reading at sciencenews.org
Photo by dawnashley, flickr
- Posted by Causecast
Related causes: Health
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How much did this study cost? I would have given you these results for free. Stress level defcon 5. Help the children recover now. Check out the work done by Generation Rescue. Search Autism on Causecast