Case Work Interventions To Relieve Stress In Parents Of Older Adults With Autism

Autism is a pervasive developmental disorder,the cause of which is not yet clear.Rehabilitation therapy as an adjunctive treatment can still only alleviate the symptoms of autistic individuals to a certain extent.Forty years have passed since the first clinical case was discovered by Professor Tao Guotai,and many of the children diagnosed with autism in China have already reached adulthood,with the number of older autistic individuals increasing over time.Parents of older autistic individuals,as primary caregivers,face extremely significant psychological stress,and the failure to relieve psychological stress can affect family life and the stability of the family structure.Therefore,this study aims to explore the importance and value of casework interventions to relieve the psychological stress of parents of older adults with autism.In this paper,the parents of older autistic persons in the Autism Society of W.City were used as the research subjects,and the required data were collected through documentation,participant observation,and interviews.It was found that this group generally suffers from difficulties in the caregiving process,high psychological stress,and unexpressed negative emotions,and needs help from formal social support such as professionals,in addition to relying on the existence of informal social support.Using rational emotion therapy as the core theory,the author analyzed the data and concluded that the main sources of psychological stress for parents are the longterm and complex nature of caregiving,security issues arising from concerns about the future,family conflicts and social discrimination,which are universal for parents.In the practical intervention stage,in order to relieve the psychological stress of parents of older autistic persons,the author used a casework approach,guided by the theory of rational emotion therapy,combined with the findings of the data analysis,and selected suitable clients for targeted casework intervention.In the first of the six case work activities,I collected information about the clients and established professional relationships with them to promote mutual trust.In the second case study,I diagnosed the client’s problems and set the goals of the case study after exchanging opinions with the client.In the next three sessions,the service plan was revised through further understanding of the client,and the client’s unreasonable perceptions were changed so that he could recognize his negative emotions and improve them through rational emotion therapy.In the last service,the author consolidated the results achieved by the client.In the closing stage,the CPSS Perceived Psychological Stress Scale was used to pre-test and post-test the clients,and the data showed that the case intervention was able to relieve the clients’ psychological stress to a certain extent.The effectiveness of the casework was effectively evaluated through both process and outcome assessments.The author also reflected and summarized the problems in the case work process,and combined the data to propose suggestions for the parents of older autistic people,who need not only the help from our social workers,but also the support and help from the society.