The impact of health counseling education program among Sudanese mothers on coping with autistic children.

Abstract

Autism spectrum disorder is a collection of developmental abnormalities that can lead to significant social, communicative and behavioural challenges. A nurse is critical in establishing a parent's level of autism awareness and coping skills. Our purpose was to evaluate how a parenting program for mothers influenced their ability to manage with autistic children. Quasi-interventional research, before and after the program was done. A total of 70 mothers of autistic children were enrolled in Khartoum State's five autism centres. The Short Form Parenting Stress Index was used to measure the level of stress and burden experienced by mothers caring for children with autism. The study showed that 31.4% of mothers had a good score in physical care skills before the intervention and 50.0% after the intervention. The mean scores of stresses pre-training 134.48 decreased to 64.1 post training program. In the pre-training program 42.90% of the mothers used problem focus coping strategy and the post-training program represented 92.85%. The educational health and counselling program played an important role in improving mothers' ability to cope with their autistic children.