Abstract

Parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) take on responsibilities of diagnosis, advocacy, and daily care. There is evidence that this impacts upon their Quality of Life (QOL). This systematic review examined the impact of parenting a child with ASD on parental QOL. Available evidence overwhelmingly suggests that poorer parental QOL exists in this group of parents when compared to parents of both typically developing children and children with other disabilities. Several factors have been identified as having an impact on parental QOL including the severity of the core features of ASD, presence of comorbidities and in particular maladaptive behaviours such as hyperactivity, oppositional defiant and conduct problems, anxiety and emotional symptoms, as well as the level of general developmental delay and impairment in activities of daily living. However, the studies examined in this review have conflicting findings as to the contribution of these on QOL. It is worth noting that methodological issues may have contributed to the discrepancy in findings such as the differences in the age of the children studied and the different measures used to assess QOL with no autism specific QOL tool being available till the recent development of the Quality of Life in Autism (QOLA) scale. Further research is indicated to better understand the determinants and predictors of negative quality of life in autism both for the patients and their caregivers.