Expressed Emotion and Alexithymia in Mothers of Autistic Children

The birth of children with special needs brings about different problems such as stress and depression for their parents. Parental characteristics influence the way these parents interact with their children. 50 mothers of autistic children were picked out from 3 autism centers in Tehran. Furthermore, to compare their scores with those of typical children mothers, 50 mothers of normal children were randomly selected from pre-school and schools in Tehran and were considered as the control group. The findings revealed that there was no significant difference between autistic children mothers and normal children ones in terms of their alexithymia scores and its sub-components including identifying and describing feelings, and also emotionally-oriented thinking. However, a significant difference was observed between the two groups in terms of the expressed emotion and its sub-components including Emotional Over-Involvement (EOI) and criticism. Finally, the results uncovered that there was a correlation between Alexithymia scores of parents and their expressed emotion ones. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2016.v7n4p419