Psychoeducational intervention improves Chinese mothers’ parenting and symptoms of their autistic children

In China, mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder struggle with parenting, often becoming depressed. This can harm the well-being and sociocognitive development of their children. We determined whether a psychoeducational group intervention increases the frequency of mothers’ positive speech patterns and alleviates their depression, and, in turn, whether these changes improve the behavior of their children. Mothers (8 from Shanghai, 8 from Taiwan) participated in a 12-week intervention of a weekly counseling session. At the end, analysis of transcripts of the mothers’ speech showed that the frequency of positive emotional words increased and negative emotional words decreased, and their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory and Beck Anxiety Inventory decreased significantly. Children also showed a significant reduction in scores on the Childhood Autism Rating Scale. These results demonstrate that counseling via a semistructured group intervention can improve mothers’ parenting and coping skills, and help to alleviate their children’s autism symptoms.