Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Quatrosi, Giuseppe
• Genovese, Dario
• Amodio, Emanuele
• Tripi, Gabriele

Titel

The Quality of Life among Siblings of Autistic Individuals: A Scoping Review

Ist Teil von

• Journal of clinical medicine, 2023-01, Vol.12 (3), p.735

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: MDPI AG

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Autism spectrum disorders are a heterogeneous group of neurodevelopmental disorders presenting at a tender age, defined by qualitative deficits in social interactions and communication, thus having a substantial influence on the subject's family unit. Quality of life (QoL) refers to a person's perspective of their life situation, cultural and value background, objectives, expectations, and standards. When focusing on childhood and adolescence, age-related changes should be considered. For this scoping review, the authors used three peer-review literature database sources (PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus, and ERIC) to delve deeper into components of the QoL of non-autistic siblings of autistic individuals. At the completion of the eligibility phase, 9 studies were included out of the 96 initial records. A total of 4/9 articles (45%) compared the non-autistic siblings of autistic individuals to the siblings of non-autistic people, while 3/9 articles (33%) compared the first group to the non-autistic siblings of patients with other chronic diseases. A total of 5/9 studies adopted specific questionnaires to evaluate QoL. Results from 6/9 articles revealed that the autism condition has varying effects on non-autistic siblings' QoL. According to the considered research, non-autistic siblings of autistic individuals experienced decreased psychological well-being, less perceived social support, increased aggressiveness and conflict-proneness, and higher levels of anxiety and stress impacting their QoL. The present findings provide important implications for additional and more punctual studies in this sector. Furthermore, as being a non-autistic sibling of an autistic individual is commonly undervalued, this review advocates the need to organize and improve support services for siblings.