REVIEW PAPER Interventions to Promote Well-Being in Parents of Children with Autism: a Systematic Review Rebecca Frantz 1 & Sarah Grace Hansen 2 & Wendy Machalicek 3 Received: 25 September 2016 /Accepted: 27 October 2017 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract Parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience unique challenges in performing their care- giving roles, often experiencing greater levels of parental stress than other parents. A systematic review of the literature on interventions to improve parental well-being among par- ents of children with ASD was conducted using three elec- tronic databases (ERIC, PSYCHINFO, Medline) and a com- bination of key terms. Forty-one of the included studies were coded according to participant characteristics, intervention characteristics, outcome measures, and study quality. The fol- lowing research questions were examined: (1) What type and format of interventions have been used to improve parental outcomes among parents of children with ASD? (2) What interventions have been most effective in improving parental outcomes? (3) How strong is the evidence base for interven- tions aimed at improving parental outcomes? Gaps in the lit- erature, future directions for research, and implications for practice will be considered. Keywords Parental stress . Parental well-being . Caregiver burden . Parental self-efficacy . Parental depression . Autism spectrum disorder Raising a child is uniquely rewarding and challenging for any parent (Crnic and Greenberg 1990; Cameron et al. 1991). The unique demands related to the parenting role can often lead to parental stress (Deater-Deckard 1998; Plant and Sanders 2007). Stressed parents are less able to engage in positive coping strategies to maintain adaptive family functioning (Blackledge and Hayes 2006; Higgins et al. 2005). Parent surveys indicate that the responsibility of caring for a child may have an additive effect to any other stressors in an adult’ s life. In addition to balancing other social roles and obligations, parents must cope with the economic and emotional require- ments of being a parent (Abidin 1990; Deater-Deckard 1998). Although parents of children with disability note positive experiences related to raising a child with special needs, par- ents of children with developmental disabilities experience higher levels of child-related stress than parents of typically developing children (Baker et al. 2002; Dumas et al. 1991; Rodrigue et al. 1990; Tomanik et al. 2004). These parents may experience additional stress due to unique demands such as scheduling multiple appointments with various professionals, having to commit time and energy to parent-implemented in- tervention, and the economic burden of providing special re- sources for their child (Lavelle et al. 2014; Sawyer et al. 2010; Sharpe and Baker 2007). Parents of children with significant disabilities such as au- tism spectrum disorder (ASD) face additional challenges not experienced by other parental groups (Falk et al. 2014). When compared to parents of typically developing children and chil- dren with other developmental delays, parents of children with ASD often experience more parenting stress (Hayes and Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-017-0123-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Sarah Grace Hansen shansen@gsu.edu 1 Department of Special Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA 2 Department of Educational Psychology, Special Education and Communication Disorders, Georgia State University, 852 CEHD, 30 Pryor St., Atlanta, GA 30303, USA 3 Department of Special Education and Clinical Sciences, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403, USA Rev J Autism Dev Disord https://doi.org/10.1007/s40489-017-0123-3