Photo by Anastasia Shuraeva from Pexels
Alt text: A man practicing relaxation with hands on chest and abdomen outdoors.
Too Long, Didn’t Read:
Findings: Mindfulness indirectly reduced depersonalization burnout symptoms (feeling emotionally detached or on “autopilot”). It did this by helping mothers engage less in helpless and submissive (negative) coping strategies. Mindfulness directly increased mothers’ sense of personal achievement, regardless of their coping styles. Mindfulness did not significantly reduce emotional exhaustion burnout symptoms.
Why? Mindfulness generally reduces stress by changing the way we perceive the world. It does so by evaluating stressors in an open, non-judgemental way. By engaging in mindfulness, parents learn to adopt in healthier coping strategies
Takeaway: Mindfulness can be a helpful tool, even for non-parents. Exploring mindfulness can reduce burnout and boost wellbeing. Mindfulness can be implemented through guided meditations, apps like Headspace, or simple breathing exercises. Despite its benefits, mindfulness is not a complete cure. Parents of autistic children should still seek broader support systems to navigate unique challenges.
If you’re a parent of an autistic child (or children), you personally understand how challenging it can be. Research has shown that parents of autistic children on average have higher stress levels than parents of neurotypical children.
Long term, this severity of stress can lead to significant parent burnout. Previous research has shown this is the case: Parents of autistic children tend to have higher levels of burnout compared to parents of neurotypical children.
Generally, many people turn to mindfulness to reduce their stress. Mindfulness aims to change how we perceive stressors by allowing us to evaluate our current circumstances in an open and non-judgemental fashion. This unbiased perception should then allow us to adopt better coping strategies and solutions in our lives.
What would mindfulness be like for parents? It may include (1) empathetically understanding your child(ren)’s needs, (2) responding to your child(ren)’s behaviours with more awareness, and (3) being more conscious during interactions with your chlid(ren).
Surprisingly, there is not a lot of research showing whether mindfulness can help with parental burnout, let alone for parents with autistic children. There is some promising research showing that mindfulness helps parents with children living with chronic illnesses. Yet, it is unclear whether mindfulness helps parents directly or indirectly. In other words, is the mindfulness helping with parental burnout, or is mindfulness leading to other behaviors that help reduce parental burnout?
The Big Question
Scientists Orhan Kocaman and Tayfun Kara wanted to investigate whether mindfulness could reduce parental burnout for parents with autistic children. They also wanted to see whether parental coping styles affected how impactful mindfulness helped with parental burnout.
The Setup
The study included 71 mothers of autistic children. The study was an interview style, where parents were primarily surveyed on mindful parenting, coping styles, and parental burnout. They also measured the severity of supports that each mother reported the child requiring.
The Discovery
Depersonalization
Parents who engaged in mindfulness had less depersonalization burnout symptoms. Depersonalization in burnout may look like emotional detachment from life, like you’re running on autopilot or living your life from the outside.
The scientists found that mindfulness’s effect on depersonalization was caused indirectly. More specifically, parents who engaged in mindfulness tended to engage in less helpless and submissive coping strategies (negative, unhealthy coping strategies), which led to less burnout.
Personal Achievement
Parents who engaged in mindfulness also reported feeling a greater sense of personal achievement. When analysing further, the scientists confirmed that mindfulness directly enhanced personal achievement, and did not differ based on parenting coping strategies.
Emotional Exhaustion
Unfortunately, mindfulness did not significantly decrease emotional exhaustion burnout symptoms.
So what? Little Birdie’s Thoughts
I personally was surprised that little research has been done on mindfulness and parental burnout, but I’m also not surprised that mindfulness was found to be helpful. Mindfulness has been proven helpful in several different contexts, so why wouldn’t it be helpful here too?
I was disappointed that the study did not also focus on parents of neurotypical children. It would be helpful to know whether the benefit of mindfulness differed between the parents. If parents of autistic children benefit less from mindfulness, this would tell us a lot about the extra support parents need when raising autistic children.
I also was a bit concerned that the authors only focused on the mothers of autistic children rather than including fathers as well. Though, I recognize that the study was conducted in Turkiye, where cultural norms likely differ from that of North America.
Last, the scientists mention a limitation in their statistical analyses (if you’re curious, they did not formally correct for their correlations, potentially inflating their Type I error). This means that we should interpret the results with caution. Regardless, we should always be cautious of results from correlational studies, as correlation does not mean causation!
The Takeaway
Parent or not, I strongly suggest you explore mindfulness to see if it will help support your wellbeing. It’s not for everyone, but it definitely has the potential to reduce stress and burnout, while also improving your mood. If you’re unsure where to start, consider trying guided mindfulness practices to teach you how to become more mindful. Here are some popular resources:
- Dr. Tara Brach’s guided mindfulness meditations
- Headspace, an app that teaches mindfulness to reduce anxiety and improve sleep
- Guided breathing exercises to help you learn to engage in mindfulness wherever you are
Alt text: An infographic titled ‘Mindfulness and Its Impact on Parental Burnout & Coping Styles’ detailing research by Kocaman & Kara on parents of autistic children. It outlines the challenge of burnout, defines mindful parenting, details a study of 71 mothers in Türkiye, highlights findings regarding depersonalization and personal achievement, lists study limitations, and suggests mindfulness resources.
The available infographic was created using Gemini.
Leave a Reply