Study Of Online Social Support Experiences Of Family Members Of Autistic People In China

Autism(Autism Spectrum Disorder)is a neurodevelopmental disorder with unclear causes and no cure.With the gradual increase in the number of autistic people in China,society has increased its attention to autistic families.Family members of autistic people face great challenges and endure high levels of mental pressure,which urgently need a better social support system.With the development of social media,family members gradually seek and provide social support in virtual community groups.Most studies in the field of autistic families have only focused on the medical field,failing to explore the online social support of family members of autistic people through the perspective of health communication.This thesis applied online social support theory to explore the online social support experiences of family members of autistic people in China.Four research questions were answered: a)What kind of online social support was presented in the group of family members? b)What about the social support experiences of family members? c)How to better provide them with social support? d)What can the media do to better support family members of autistic people?This thesis conducted content analysis on 672 pieces of text in a We Chat group and interviewed 12 participants.After doing a thematic analysis,I concluded four main themes: a)the meaning of autism,b)the support sources,c)the barriers to professional support and d)expected social support.In the coding scheme for the We Chat group of family members of autistic people,the social support seeking included seeking emotional support,informational support and instrumental support;the social support provision included providing emotional support,informational support,appraisal support,accompanying support and instrumental support.This study’s results show that emotional and informational support are the two main support categories in the autism group.Moreover,families have the strongest need for emotional support,most often providing informational and accompanying support to others.It shows that autistic families are already selfsufficient in informational support,and there is short of emotional support.Regarding the social support experiences of the family members of autistic people,there are four major sources for them to obtain social support,including self-help,authoritative sources,family support,and other family members of autistic people.Through these sources of support,family members gradually built up a correct understanding of autism and accepted the fact that they needed to take care of autistic patients.During the interviews,the author also concluded that there were obstacles for them in receiving professional support from authoritative sources such as hospitals,institutions,and schools,including low professional competence,lack of individualized rehabilitation assistance,long waiting times for enrolment,rejection by regular schools,and financial burden on the family for training costs.In terms of how to better provide support for the family members of autistic people,the author starts with the government,community and institution.The government should further increase the financial subsidies for autistic families,promote the employment of older autistic people,and guarantee the care of older autistic people;the community and institutions are more attuned to the daily life of autistic families,and both are needed to jointly support autistic families from diagnosis to rehabilitation training.This includes building the correct understanding of families with autism,promoting integration,and providing services such as psychological counselling and parental respite.At the same time,the media serves as a channel and platform to help the above-mentioned government,hospitals,communities,institutions,schools and other subjects to integrate resources more conveniently.Expected assistance from the media includes facilitating the creation of personalized profiles of autistic families,promoting more targeted communication among family groups of autistic patients,and promoting the popularization of knowledge of autism.