Page 113-121 Afifa Talha and C. N. Ram Gopal
Chettinad Academy of Research and Education, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
T
Being a caregiver for a chronically ill child is very challenging and stressful for the
caregivers. It much more challenging if there is an autistic child in family, a child with
autism plays a major role that negatively affects the family and its daily functioning.
The carers of children with autism spectrum disorder undergoes lot of strains. The
present study focused on the caregiver strain and coping strategies among carers of
children with autism spectrum disorder. AIM: The present study aim is to assess the
level of strain, type of strain and type of coping strategies and relationship between the
subscales of variables namely caregiver strain and coping strategies. METHODS: For
analysing this study methods used were descriptive statistic, Pearson correlation, student
t-test and one way ANOVA using SPSS version 29.0. Sample size collected was 248,
where 73.40% were primary caregivers and 26.60% were secondary caregivers.
RESULTS: The findings of this study shows that the majority of respondents had high
and moderate level of strains. 55% of caregivers experienced objective strain (i.e.,
financial burden, disruptions in family relations, and difficulties with neighbours). 62%
of participants were using family integration, cooperation, and an optimistic definition of
the situation as their coping strategy. The finding also reveals that there is negligible
negative correlation among the subscales of two variables namely caregiver strain and
coping strategies