With a little help from my friends: psychological, endocrine and health corollaries of social support in parental caregivers of children with autism or ADHD

Lovell, Brian, Wetherell, Mark and Moss, Mark (2012) With a little help from my friends: psychological, endocrine and health corollaries of social support in parental caregivers of children with autism or ADHD. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 33 (2). pp. 682-687. ISSN 0891-4222

[img]
Preview
Text
Manuscript_CG_SS_CORT.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0.

Download (287kB) | Preview
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2011.11.014

Abstract

Elevated psychological distress and concomitant dysregulation of the hypothalamic pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis has been implicated as one pathway that links the stress of caregiving with adverse health outcomes. This study assessed whether perceived social support might mitigate the psychological, endocrine and health consequences of caregiver stress in parents of children with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Parental caregivers completed measures of psychological distress, perceived availability of social support and physical health complaints. To capture important parameters of the basal diurnal cortisol pattern, caregivers collected salivary cortisol at waking, 30 minutes post waking, 1200h and 2200h on two consecutive weekdays. Psychological distress and self reported physical health complaints were inversely related to scores on all support subscales: tangible, belonging, self esteem and appraisal. Results further revealed a significant, positive association between magnitude of the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and caregivers' self esteem. As a buffer between the stress of caregiving and adverse physical health outcomes, social support acts to reduce stress appraisals and mitigate disturbances of the HPA axis. Moving forward, intervention programmes might seek to increase caregivers' perceived availability of social resources

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: ADHD, autism, caregiver, cortisol, physical health complaints, social support, stress appraisals
Subjects: C800 Psychology
Department: Faculties > Health and Life Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User: Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited: 14 Dec 2011 15:21
Last Modified: 31 Jul 2021 15:46
URI: http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/4099

Actions (login required)

View Item View Item

Downloads

Downloads per month over past year

View more statistics