FATHER'S EXPERIENCE OF HAVING A CHILD WITH AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDER
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Abstract
Being a father of a child with autism spectrum disorder could be challenging. Parents of children with ASD could experience a wide variety of emotional, financial, and social burdens, as well as compromised mental health due to their child's condition. There is a lack of support provided specifically for the mental health of fathers of ASD children. In addition, the focus of some previous research that discussed similar issues only focused on the perspectives of mothers or both parents, rather than emphasizing on father figures. There is a difference between fathers and mothers whereas father of children with ASD were more likely to suppress their negative emotions, experience anger, and guilt rather than sadness that were experienced by mother of children with ASD. The purpose of this study is to describe, understand, and explore the meaning factors that experienced by fathers. Three fathers of children with ASD participated in this research through semi-structural interview that addressed the response and impact of child’s diagnosis, the relationship with family and relatives, the implications for father’s mental health. and father’s support system. The interview transcripts of fathers of ASD child were processed through the stages of the coding stages and were analyzed in depth using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach. The fathers in this study had similar experiences to the findings in previous research. The results of the analysis of the findings in this study were identified into seven "major themes", namely: (a) path of acceptance, (b) autism diagnosis response, (c) father involvement, (d) heterogeneous support systems, (e) father struggles, (f) coping styles, and (g) relationships with others. By understanding the obstacles and supportive circumstances experienced by fathers, this could be a potential to help fathers overcome the challenges of parenting an ASD child.
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