ORIGINAL PAPER The Association Between Child Autism Symptomatology, Maternal Quality of Life, and Risk for Depression Benjamin Zablotsky • Connie Anderson • Paul Law Published online: 21 December 2012 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012 Abstract Parents raising children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) have been shown to experience high levels of stress and report a lower quality of life. The current study examined the association between child autism symptomatology, mother’s quality of life, and mother’s risk for depression in a sample of 1,110 mothers recruited from a web-based registry of families with chil- dren with an ASD. Higher autism symptomatology and a greater number of co-occurring psychiatric disorders in the child were associated with an increased risk for current treatment of maternal depression and a lower maternal quality of life. The results highlight the importance of screening for depression, particularly in mothers of chil- dren with ASD and mental health and behavioral challenges. Keywords Parental depression Á Autism spectrum Á Parents Á Parent stress Á Quality of life Introduction Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are a set of neurode- velopmental disorders that affect approximately 1 in 88 children in the United States (AADMN 2012). Children with an ASD present with social and communication impairments and exhibit restricted, repetitive and stereo- typed behaviors (APA 2000), and many will also present with comorbid psychiatric conditions, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and externalizing and internalizing disorders (Hofvander et al. 2009; Leyfer et al. 2006; Ponde et al. 2010). Parents raising a child with an ASD may therefore struggle with complex and over- lapping behavioral challenges (Ja ¨rbrink et al. 2003). In fact, when compared to parents of typically-developing chil- dren, parents of children with ASDs consistently report higher levels of stress (e.g. Baker-Ericzen et al. 2005; Rao and Beidel 2009). Likewise, parents of children with ASDs report higher levels of stress when compared to parents of children with other developmental disabilities or physical impairments (Abbeduto et al. 2004; Rodrigue et al. 1992). The amount of stress experienced by parents of children with an ASD may be influenced by the severity of the child’s condition. Results of the few studies that have addressed this question have consistently shown that as the number of ASD symptoms increases, the amount of stress reported by parents also increases (Benson 2006). Addi- tional findings include an association between the presence of behavior problems and increased parental stress (Davis and Carter 2008; Hastings 2003; Lecavalier et al. 2006). Different ASD diagnoses have also been linked to varied levels of stress. Parents of children with Asperger’s dis- order report the highest levels of stress (Mori et al. 2009), while parents of children with autism report higher levels of stress than parents of children with Pervasive B. Zablotsky (&) Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 624 N. Broadway, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA e-mail: bzablots@jhsph.edu C. Anderson Towson University, Towson, MD, USA P. Law Medical Informatics Department, Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA P. Law Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA 123 J Autism Dev Disord (2013) 43:1946–1955 DOI 10.1007/s10803-012-1745-z