The estimation of the functioning of families with ASD children

BACKGROUND: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a disease described as a neurodevelopmental disorder as the impairment of social and communication functions. Life of the people with ASD depends on the early introduction of intensive therapeutic programmes, modifying the undesirable behaviours, and aimed at teaching social and communication skills. AIMS: The goal of the present work is to estimation the functioning of families with an ASD child and compare it to the functioning of families with children not diagnosed with ASD. METHODS: The study was performed using Flexibility and Cohesion Evaluation Scales. The study included 70 parents of ASD children, and 70 parents with children without diagnosed ASD, as the control group. RESULTS: The parents of children with autism achieve lower results in the Balanced Cohesion sub-scale than the control group. Also, the parents of ASD children obtained higher scores in the Disengaged sub-scale than the control group. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this papers can suggesting the risk of the appearance of a disturbed family system, functioning in families with children with ASD, which should be a trigger for providing these families with early family functioning diagnosis and consequent support and therapy.