Parents of children with Autism have often feared that along with
their child's diagnoses comes an inevitable divorce. It has often been
reported that families with a child with Autism have an 80% divorce
rate. Brian Freedman, Clinical Director of the Kennedy Krieger
Institute of Autism and Related Disorders had doubts that those
statistics were accurate, and looked for more concrete evidence.
Freedman found after looking at the 2007 National Children's Health Survey, that a diagnose of Autism had no effect on whether on not a family stayed intact. Often similar statistics have been said of parents whose child dies. Over the years it has been determined that divorce increases in those cases when the parents already had marital discord prior to their child's illness and death and not because of it. Perhaps the same might be found in later studies of families with an Autistic child.
While there is no doubt that there are increased stressors associated with families in either of these scenarios, it is important for parents to hear that divorce is not a foregone conclusion.
For more on this story go to: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2010/05/19/126976857/autism_diagnosis_children_divorce
For ideas on family stress reduction go to: http://www.autism-society.org/site/PageServer?pagename=life_fam_stress
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