The Effects of Individual and Group Training on General Health andStress of Parents of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Objectives: stress level of families of children with autism is higher than moderate levels. since the childwith autism and the awareness of their disorders severely disappoint the parents, the problems, too muchresponsibility, and the attempts to improve the child’s situation, which usually fail, gradually increasesthe feelings of depression, anger, and guilt in parents. this study compared the effects of individual andgroup training on general health and stress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorders.methods: a number of 75 parents of children referring to autistic children foundation (including 50parents in two experimental groups and 25 parents in control group) were taken into account. participatedparents were selected through accessible sampling method.results: in order to diagnose autism spectrum disorders, questionnaires such as goldberg-williams’,general health, abedin’s stress, and gars’ (gilliam) were used; while in order to analyze the gathereddata, the correlation method (comparison of pre-test and post-test means), independent t- (comparison ofcontrol and experimental groups) and one-way covariance (a survey of effects left by individual andgroup training methods on parents with emphasis being laid on control and experimental groups) wereused.discussion: there was no difference between parents receiving training in group and those receivingtraining in individual form. with respect to the correlation between general health and stress levels, bothgroup and individual trainings resulted in a raise in general health and stress levels of parents.