Parental Emotion Expression, Emotional Intelligence, Alexithymia And Influcing Factors Of The Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder

Objective:This study aims to investigate the characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder under 12 years of age in Shanxi and their parents,the status of parental emotion expression,emotional intelligence and alexithymia.Provide a scientific basis and policy recommendations to improve parental mental health of children with autism spectrum disorder.Method:A convenience sampling method was used to select 350 parents whose children with autism spectrum disorder as participants in Shanxi Province.A cross-sectional survey was conducted by a self-report questionnaire,including the characteristics and family information of children with autism spectrum disorder,Emotion Expression Scale,Emotional Quotient Inventory and Toronto Alexithymia Scale.In order to understand the characteristics of children with autism spectrum disorder and its differences in terms of parental emotion,the Epidata was used for data input and SPSS 17.0 for data processing.Descriptive statistics are expressed by the number of people.T-test and variance analysis were used for univariate analysis.Results:There were 350 parents whose children with autism spectrum disorder in this study.Regarding marriage,the study included 328(93.7%).A significant proportion of participants were education with primary school and below.There are 116 participants with family structure of four,which accounted for 33.1%;137 participants were urban,which accounted for 39.1%.Family yearly income of 2300 RMB and blew accounted for 40.3%(n=141).The mean age of children was 6.05±2.38 years.The mean age of first diagnosis time with autism spectrum disorder was 3.14±1.24.Parental emotion intelligence with primary school was significantly lower than high school or secondary school(P=0.001)and college or below(P=0.003).Parental emotion expression with child's diagnosis the time of illness under 1 year was significantly lower than more than 1 year(P=0.017).Parental emotion intelligence with heavy grade was significantly higher than medium grade(P=0.02).Parental emotion intelligence with regular life was significantly higher than irregular life(P=0.003).Parental emotion intelligence in low alexithymia was significantly higher than medium alexithymia(P<0.001)and high alexithymia(P<0.001),medium alexithymia was significantly higher than high alexithymia(P<0.001).Emotional intelligence had significant between different alexithymia(P<0.001).The total and factors' scores of TAS-26 in parents were significantly higher than the national norm(P<0.05).There were significant no differences on emotion expression,emotional intelligence and alexithymia in different parent,marital status,occupation,family structure,family residence,the per-capita income of family,child's gender,child's IQ level and parent's life satisfaction(P>0.05).Conclusion:The parental alexithymia of children with autism spectrum disorder under 12 years of age in Shanxi was high,which was significantly higher than the national norm.Parental degree of education,living habits,alexithymia,and diagnostic autism spectrum disorders grade of children were related to emotional intelligence.Intervention strategies should be provided according to different people,and help parents with autism spectrum disorder improve their emotion expression ability.