ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry 2008;9 (2):65-72. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Correspondence: Salmi Binti Razali, Faculty of Medicine, University of Technology MARA (UiTM), Level 20, S&T Tower 1, 40450, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. Email: drsalmi@gmail.com Received March 3, 2008; Accepted April 2, 2008. ORIGINAL ARTICLE Stress and psychological wellbeing among parents of children with autism spectrum disorder AZLINA WATI NIKMAT 1 , MAHADIR AHMAD 2 , NG LAI OON 2 , & SALMI RAZALI 1 1 Unit of Psychological and Behavioral Sciences, Faculty of Medicine ,University of Technology Mara, Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia. 2 Unit of Health Psychology, Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Abstract Objective: To investigate the prevalence of parental stress and psychological wellbeing among parents with autistic children and their associations with dimensions of support sys- tem. Methods: This is a preliminary cross sectional study which randomly selected parents with clinically diagnosed autistic children. Those parents who attended psycho-education ses- sion on management of autistic children at Health Psychology Unit were randomly selected to enroll in the study. Psychological wellbeing, parental stress and dimensions of support system were assessed by using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), the Parenting Stress In- dex (PSI) and the Provision Social Relation (PSR), respectively. Results: Of 52 parents with autistic children (34 female and 18 male), about 90.4% of parents had significant parenting stress, and 53.8% of parents showed clinical disturbance in psychological wellbeing. Gender (t=1.67, p=0.02) and occupation (F=4.78, p=0.01) showed statistically significant association with psychological wellbeing. No association found between other socio-demographic fac- tors, parental stress and psychological wellbeing with dimensions of support system among parents with autistic children. Conclusion: Parents with autistic children have high prevalence of stress and psychological disturbances. Interactions of various factors need to be acknowl- edged and considered in order to reduce the burden of parents with autistic children. Keywords: parental stress, psychological wellbeing, autism, social support Introduction There is strong evidence from research lit- erature that parents of autistic children face a high level of stress. Given that parenting a child with autism is uniquely challenging and can be extremely stressful [1, 2, 3], un- derstanding factors that contribute to paren- tal well-being is of utmost importance. In comparison to parents of typically develop- ing children, parents raising children with disabilities experience more parenting stress [4] and have higher rates of depres- sion [1,5]. Even among parents raising children with disabilities, parents of chil- dren with autism report significantly higher levels of stress [1, 2] and are more likely to experience depression [6,7]. Another study [8] has also indicated that parenting an autistic child may have an im- pact on the parents’ health and well-being. Given the multiple roles demand that work- ing and nonworking mother experience [9, 10, 11], mothers with typically developing children or children with special needs un- related to autism may also experience this