The Effectiveness of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy on Parenting Stress Components of Mothers of Children with Autism

Abstract Background & Purpose: Many factors can cause parenting stress, including having a child with autism Therefore, the present study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy on the parenting stress components of mothers of children with autism. Methods: The method of this research was quasi-experimental with pre-test and post-test design and a three-month follow-up with the control group. The statistical population included all mothers of children with autism in Tehran in 2020. Among them, 30 people were selected by purposive sampling method and randomly assigned to two group control (15 people) and experimental (15 people). The Parenting Stress Index Questionnaire (Abidin, 1990) was used to collect data. The experimental group received intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy intervention in 12 sessions of 60 minutes (one session per week) individually, and the control group did not receive any intervention. To analyze the research data, one-way multivariate covariance analysis of repeated measurements and post hoc tests were used. Findings: The results showed that intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy affected the components of parenting stress (sense of competence, attachment, role limitation, depression, relationship with spouse, social isolation, and parental health) of mothers of children with autism. Effectiveness was maintained after the follow-up period (P <0.01). Conclusion: Therefore, it can be concluded that intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy is an effective strategy in improving all the components of parenting stress of mothers with children with autism and can be used as an effective treatment.