A case-control study of personality style and psychopathology in parents of subjects with autism.
Autism parents show more reserved and depressive traits than parents of children with other diagnoses, but similar to parents of children with intellectual disability.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Bölte et al. (2007) compared parents of children with autism to parents of children with other diagnoses. They looked at personality traits and mental health in each group.
The study used a case-control design. This means they matched families by age and other factors, then compared the groups.
What they found
Parents of children with autism showed more reserved and depressive personality traits than parents of children with OCD or schizophrenia. However, they looked similar to parents of children with intellectual disability.
This suggests some personality patterns may be specific to autism families, but not completely unique.
How this fits with other research
Bouras et al. (2004) found higher anxiety and depression in autism relatives before this study. Bölte et al. (2007) built on this by adding comparison groups to test if these traits were autism-specific.
Gregory et al. (2020) later pooled many studies and found about one in three autism parents have clinical depression or anxiety. This meta-analysis actually includes the Bölte et al. (2007) data, showing how the field moved from small comparisons to big-picture numbers.
Dissanayake et al. (2020) flipped the question. Instead of asking 'what's wrong with autism parents?', they studied autism traits in parents of typically developing children. This helps us see autism traits as part of normal human variation, not just pathology.
Why it matters
When you meet autism parents, know that reserved or depressive traits may be part of the broader autism phenotype, not just stress from parenting. This means you should screen for depression and anxiety routinely, not just during crisis periods. Also, remember these traits can affect how parents learn and implement behavior plans. You might need to adjust your teaching style for more introverted or detail-focused parents, just like you individualize for their children.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
To probe the specificity of traits that might be conceptualised as the broader phenotype of autism, parents of subjects with autism from simplex and multiplex families as well as parents of subjects with obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), early onset schizophrenia (EOS) and mental retardation (MR) were assessed using the Personality Style and Disorder Inventory and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised. Autism parents' scores were increased on several subscales (e.g. reserved/schizoid, depression) compared to parents of subjects with OCD, EOS and normative data, but not in comparison to MR parents. Results provide some support for the specificity of the broader phenotype of autism. The burden of raising severely disabled children could not be ruled out as a factor influencing parts of this phenotype.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2007 · doi:10.1007/s10803-006-0165-3