Predictors of Change in Wellbeing and Mental Health of Parents of Autistic Pre-Schoolers.

The sample size was small (N=53), which limits the power to detect true effects and increases the risk of false positives in exploratory analyses. After correcting for multiple comparisons, no baseline factors significantly predicted change in parent outcomes, so the study does not provide evidence for specific predictors of improvement or deterioration. Parents with significant, unmanaged depression or anxiety were excluded from the study, which may limit the generalizability of the findings to parents with more severe mental health needs. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with some data collection occurring during lockdowns, which may have influenced parent wellbeing and mental health independently of the intervention or child factors. The majority of participants were mothers (85%), limiting the applicability of findings to fathers.

Authors have previously received salary from grant funding to conduct research associated with the clinical provider of early intervention that participants were enrolled in, and thus held prior affiliations with this clinical provider.

Do not interpret the exploratory regression results as evidence that specific factors like parent-child relationship quality reliably predict parent outcomes. The study explicitly states that these associations were no longer statistically significant after correcting for multiple comparisons, and the primary finding was that there was no average change in parent wellbeing or mental health over the year.