Quality of life among parents of children with autistic disorder: A sample from the Arab world

• This is the first study to examine the QoL of parents of children with Autistic Disorder in the Arab world.
• Parents showed acceptable physical and social health. The environmental health was relatively poor.
• Fathers and mothers of children with Autistic Disorder showed no significant differences in their QoL levels.
• The QoL of the parents was contingent upon their stress, coping, demographics, and to some extent their cultural context.

BackgroundA growing body of research has sought to examine issues associated with the Quality of Life (QoL) of parents of children with Autistic Disorder. However, no studies have examined the QoL of Arab parents whose parenting experience is expected to be substantially different from that of their western counterparts. Therefore, the purposes of this study were: (1) to examine differences in the QoL between fathers and mothers of children with Autistic Disorder in a sample from an Arab country, and (2) to examine the psychosocial correlates of the QoL of Arab parents of children with Autistic Disorder.MethodsSelf-administered questionnaires on parents’ QoL, stress, coping strategies, and demographic characteristics were completed by 184 parents of children with Autistic Disorder. The participants were recruited using the convenience sampling design.ResultsFathers and mothers of children with Autistic Disorder showed no significant differences in their physical, psychological, social, and environmental health. Further, both parents showed almost similar bivariate correlations between the reported QoL levels and their parenting stress, coping strategies, and demographic characteristics.ConclusionThis is the first study to examine the QoL of parents of children with Autistic Disorder in the Arab world and, in doing so, it highlighted the distinct lack of research in this area. The QoL of Arab parents of children with Autistic Disorder crosses lines with their stress levels, coping strategies, demographic characteristics, and to some extent their cultural context.