The Effectiveness of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on Caregiver Burden and Mental Fatigue of Autistic Children’s Mothers

Introduction: The stress caused by parenting a child with autism leads to caregiver burden and mental fatigue in mothers. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based stress reduction of caregiver burden and mental fatigue of mothers with autistic children.  Methods: The research method was semi-experimental with a pre-test/post-test and a control group design. The statistical population of the present study included all mothers of children with autism in autism educational centers in Isfahan in the academic year of 2018-2019. Among them, thirty mothers were selected by the available sampling method and then randomly divided into two experimental and control groups. For data collection, the mental fatigue questionnaire (Falman et al., 2013) and the caregiver burden questionnaire (Zarit et al., 1980) were used in the pre-test and post-test state. The experimental group received mindfulness-based stress reduction therapy for eight sessions, but the control group received no intervention. Data analysis was performed using covariance analysis. Results: The results showed that mean scores of caregiver burden and mental fatigue in the experimental group significantly decreased. (P<0.05) Conclusions: Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that mindfulness-based stress reduction can be used as an interventional method in reducing the caregiver burden and mental fatigue of mothers with an autistic child.