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Alshaban FA, Ghazal I, Al-Harahsheh ST, Lotfy M, Al-Shammari H, Al-Faraj F, Thompson IR, Ratto AB, Nasir A, Tolefat M. Effects of COVID-19 on Autism Spectrum Disorder in Qatar. Front Psychiatry 2024; 15:1322011. [PMID: 38445086 PMCID: PMC10913057 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1322011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/15/2023] [Accepted: 01/31/2024] [Indexed: 03/07/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction The unprecedented impact of the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has had profound implications on the ASD community, including disrupting daily life, increasing stress and emotional dysregulation in autistic children, and worsening individual and family well-being. Methods This study used quantitative and qualitative survey data from parents in Qatar (n=271), to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on autistic children and their families in Qatar. The questionnaire was a combination of open-ended (qualitative) and closed-ended (quantitative) questions to explore patterns in the experiences of the different families, as well as to contrive themes. The survey was created in a way to evaluate the psychological, academic/intervention, economic, and other impacts of the pandemic related measures on a sample of multicultural families residing in the State of Qatar during the peak period of confinement and physical distancing in 2020. Data acquisition involved the utilization of Google Forms. Subsequent quantitative analysis employed the SPSS software and chi-square analysis for numerical examination, enabling the characterization of the studied population and exploration of associations between parental stress levels and variables such as employment status, therapy accessibility, presence of hired assistance, and alterations in their childs skills. Concurrently, qualitative data from written responses underwent thorough categorization, encompassing themes such as emotional isolation, mental or financial challenges, and difficulties in obtaining support. Results Parents expressed distress and disturbance in their daily lives, including profound disruptions to their childrens access to treatment, education, and activities. Most parents reported deteriorations in their childrens sleep (69.4%), behavioral regulation (52.8%), and acquired skills across multiple domains (54.2%). Parents also reported decreased access to family and social support networks, as well as decreased quality of clinical and community support. Qualitative analysis of parental responses revealed that child developmental regression was an important source of parental stress. Discussion and conclusion The greater impact of the pandemic on autistic children and their families emphasizes the need for accessible and affordable health, education, and family services to manage their special needs.
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Affiliation(s)
- Fouad A. Alshaban
- Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
- College of Health and Life Sciences, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Iman Ghazal
- Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| | | | - Mustafa Lotfy
- Community Outreach, Qatar Autism Family Association, Doha, Qatar
| | - Hawraa Al-Shammari
- Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Fatema Al-Faraj
- Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| | - I. Richard Thompson
- Qatar Biomedical Research Institute, Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| | - Allison B. Ratto
- Center for Autism Spectrum Disorders, Childrens National Health System, Rockville, MD, United States
| | - Assal Nasir
- Department of Biological Sciences, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Mohamed Tolefat
- Autism Department, Shafallah Center for Children with Disabilities, Doha, Qatar
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Sideropoulos V, Van Herwegen J, Meuleman B, Alessandri M, Alnemary FM, Rad JA, Lavenex PAB, Bolshakov N, Bölte S, Buffle P, Cai RY, Campos R, Chirita-Emandi A, Costa AP, Costanzo F, Des Portes V, Dukes D, Faivre L, Famelart N, Fisher MH, Gamaiunova L, Giannadou A, Gupta R, Hardan AY, Houdayer-Robert F, Hrncirova L, Iaochite RT, Jariabkova K, Klein-Tasman BP, Lavenex P, Malik S, Mari F, Martinez-Castilla P, Menghini D, Nuske HJ, Palikara O, Papon A, Pegg RS, Pouretemad H, Poustka L, Prosetzky I, Renieri A, Rhodes SM, Riby DM, Rossi M, Sadeghi S, Su X, Tai C, Tran M, Tynan F, Uljarević M, Van Hecke AV, Veiga G, Verloes A, Vicari S, Werneck-Rohrer SG, Zander E, Samson AC. Anxiety, concerns and COVID-19: Cross-country perspectives from families and individuals with neurodevelopmental conditions. J Glob Health 2023; 13:04081. [PMID: 37497751 PMCID: PMC10373111 DOI: 10.7189/jogh.13.04081] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 07/28/2023] Open
Abstract
Background The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the mental health and well-being of children with neurodevelopmental conditions (NDCs) and of their families worldwide. However, there is insufficient evidence to understand how different factors (e.g., individual, family, country, children) have impacted on anxiety levels of families and their children with NDCs developed over time. Methods We used data from a global survey assessing the experience of 8043 families and their children with NDCs (mean of age (m) = 13.18 years, 37% female) and their typically developing siblings (m = 12.9 years, 45% female) in combination with data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the University of Oxford, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) World Factbook, to create a multilevel data set. Using stepwise multilevel modelling, we generated child-, family- and country-related factors that may have contributed to the anxiety levels of children with NDCs, their siblings if they had any, and their parents. All data were reported by parents. Results Our results suggest that parental anxiety was best explained by family-related factors such as concerns about COVID-19 and illness. Children's anxiety was best explained by child-related factors such as children's concerns about loss of routine, family conflict, and safety in general, as well as concerns about COVID-19. In addition, anxiety levels were linked to the presence of pre-existing anxiety conditions for both children with NDCs and their parents. Conclusions The present study shows that across the globe there was a raise in anxiety levels for both parents and their children with NDCs because of COVID-19 and that country-level factors had little or no impact on explaining differences in this increase, once family and child factors were considered. Our findings also highlight that certain groups of children with NDCs were at higher risk for anxiety than others and had specific concerns. Together, these results show that anxiety of families and their children with NDCs during the COVID-19 pandemic were predicted by very specific concerns and worries which inform the development of future toolkits and policy. Future studies should investigate how country factors can play a protective role during future crises.
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Affiliation(s)
- Vassilis Sideropoulos
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, London, UK
| | - Jo Van Herwegen
- Department of Psychology and Human Development, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, London, UK
| | - Ben Meuleman
- Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Michael Alessandri
- Department of Psychology, University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, USA
| | | | - Jamal Amani Rad
- Department of Cognitive Modeling, Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
| | | | | | - Sven Bölte
- Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet (KIND), Center for Psychiatry Research, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Paulina Buffle
- Laboratory of Sensori-Motor Affective and Social Development, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
| | - Ru Y Cai
- Aspect Research Centre for Autism Practice, Autism Spectrum Australia, Frenchs Forest, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Ruth Campos
- Department of Basic Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
| | - Adela Chirita-Emandi
- Department of Microscopic Morphology - Genetics, Center of Genomic Medicine, University of Medicine and Pharmacy "Victor Babes" Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania
| | - Andreia P Costa
- Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
| | - Floriana Costanzo
- Child and Adolescents Neuropsychiatry Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Rome, Italy
| | - Vincent Des Portes
- National Reference Center for Intellectual Disabilities of Rare causes, Lyon University Hospital, France
| | - Daniel Dukes
- Institute of Special Education, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
| | - Laurence Faivre
- Centre de Génétique et Centre de Référence Anomalies du Développement et Syndromes Malformatifs, FHU TRANSLAD, INSERM UMR1231, Hôpital d'Enfants, CHU Dijon, Dijon Cedex, France
| | | | - Marisa H Fisher
- Department of Counselling, Educational Psychology, & Special Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA
| | - Liudmilla Gamaiunova
- Institute for Social Sciences of Religions, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | | | - Rashmi Gupta
- Cognitive and Behavioural Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Powai, Maharashtra, India
| | - Antonio Y Hardan
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | | | - Lenka Hrncirova
- Department of Special and Inclusive Education, Faculty of Education, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic
| | | | - Katarina Jariabkova
- Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia
| | | | - Pierre Lavenex
- Laboratory of Brain and Cognitive Development, Institute of Psychology, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland
| | | | | | - Pastora Martinez-Castilla
- Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED), Madrid, Spain
| | - Deny Menghini
- Child and Adolescents Neuropsychiatry Unit, Bambino Gesù Children's Hospital, Rome, Italy
| | - Heather J Nuske
- Penn Center for Mental Health, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
| | - Olympia Palikara
- Department of Education Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Warwick, Warwick, UK
| | - Anouk Papon
- Faculty of Psychology, UniDistance Suisse, Brig, Switzerland
| | - Robin S Pegg
- Williams Syndrome Association, Troy, Michigan, USA
| | - Hamidreza Pouretemad
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Luise Poustka
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medical Centre Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Ingolf Prosetzky
- Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Applied Sciences Zittau / Görlitz, Görlitz, Germany
| | | | - Sinead M Rhodes
- Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
| | - Deborah M Riby
- Department of Psychology, Centre for Neurodiversity & Development, Durham University, Durham, UK
| | - Massimiliano Rossi
- Service de génétique HCL, INSERM U1028, CNRS UMR5292, CRNL, GENDEV Team, UCBL1, Bron, France
| | - Saeid Sadeghi
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
| | - Xueyen Su
- Department of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China
| | - Claire Tai
- Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
| | - Michel Tran
- Faculty of Psychology, UniDistance Suisse, Brig, Switzerland
| | - Fionnuala Tynan
- Faculty of Education, Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, Ireland
| | - Mirko Uljarević
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
| | - Amy V Van Hecke
- Department of Psychology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
| | - Guida Veiga
- Comprehensive Health Research Centre (CHRC), Departamento de Desporto e Saúde, Escola de Saúde e Desenvolvimento Humano, Universidade de Évora, Évora, Portugal
| | - Alain Verloes
- Department of Genetics, APHP.NUP Robert DEBRE University Hospital, Paris, France
| | - Stefano Vicari
- Department of Life Sciences and Public Health, Catholic University, Rome, Italy
| | - Sonja G Werneck-Rohrer
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
| | - Eric Zander
- Center of Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Karolinska Institutet (KIND), Center for Psychiatry Research, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Stockholm, Sweden
| | - Andrea C Samson
- Faculty of Psychology, UniDistance Suisse, Brig, Switzerland
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