Communication between Parents and Autistic Children to Gain Social Support

Herna Herna; Sarwititi Sarwoprasodjo; Aida Vitayala S Hubies; Herien Puspitawati

doi:10.29313/mimbar.v36i1.5463

Communication between Parents and Autistic Children to Gain Social Support

Herna Herna, Sarwititi Sarwoprasodjo, Aida Vitayala S Hubies, Herien Puspitawati

Abstract

The prevalence of autism among children in Indonesia during the last decade has been increased dramatically. This condition becomes a matter of concern because parents who raise children with autism experience stress and it is impacted their parenting. That situation is directly attributable to the fact that children with autism are often rigid and obsessive. Additionally, social stigma increases stress to parents of children with autism. This research aims to explore offline and online social supports for parents of children with autism. Targeted online social support sources are Facebook and WhatsApps Group. The research results show that the parents acquire offline social supports, especially from the nuclear family. Parents receive online social support that they could not fulfill offline and have benefited from online social media groups by getting information and emotional supports.

Keywords

social support, social media, autism

Full Text:

PDF

References

Achkova, M., & Manolova, H. (2014). Diagnosis Autism - from Kanner and Asperger to DSM-5. Journal of Intellectual Disability - Diagnosis and Treatment. https://doi.org/10.6000/2292-2598.2014.02.02.4

American Psychiatric Association. (2017). DSM-5 Update. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder.

Amireh, M. M. H. (2019). Stress Levels and Coping Strategies among Parents of Children with Autism and Down Syndrome: The Effect of Demographic Variables on Levels of Stress. Child Care in Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/13575279.2018.1446907

Apriani, R. (Widyatama). (2017). Pengembangan Aplikasi Wedding Invitation Berbasis Kolaborasi Media Sosial.

Banach, M., Iudice, J., Conway, L., & Couse, L. J. (2010). Family support and empowerment: Post autism diagnosis support group for parents. Social Work with Groups. https://doi.org/10.1080/01609510903437383

Buglass, S. L., Binder, J. F., Betts, L. R., & Underwood, J. D. M. (2017). Motivators of online vulnerability: The impact of social network site use and FOMO. Computers in Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.09.055

CDC - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2019). Data & Statistics on Autism Spectrum Disorder | CDC. CDC.Gov.

Cheung, Y. T. D., Chan, C. H. H., Wang, M. P., Li, H. C. W., & Lam, T. H. (2017). Online Social Support for the Prevention of Smoking Relapse: A Content Analysis of the WhatsApp and Facebook Social Groups. Telemedicine and E-Health. https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2016.0176

Cho, H., Silver, N., Na, K., Adams, D., Luong, K. T., & Song, C. (2018). Visual cancer communication on social media: An examination of content and effects of #Melanomasucks. Journal of Medical Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.2196/10501

Cole, L., Kharwa, Y., Khumalo, N., Reinke, J. S., & Karrim, S. B. S. (2017). Caregivers of School-aged Children with Autism: Social Media as a Source of Support. Journal of Child and Family Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0855-9

Gage-Bouchard, E. A., LaValley, S., Mollica, M., & Beaupin, L. K. (2017). Communication and Exchange of Specialized Health-Related Support Among People With Experiential Similarity on Facebook. Health Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10410236.2016.1196518

Hård Af Segerstad, Y., & Kasperowski, D. (2015). A community for grieving: Affordances of social media for support of bereaved parents. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2014.983557

Ilias, K., Cornish, K., Kummar, A. S., Park, M. S. A., & Golden, K. J. (2018). Parenting stress and resilience in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in Southeast Asia: A systematic review. In Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00280

Kamel Boulos, M. N., Giustini, D. M., & Wheeler, S. (2016). Instagram and WhatsApp in health and healthcare: An overview. In Future Internet. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi8030037

Kiami, S. R., & Goodgold, S. (2017). Support Needs and Coping Strategies as Predictors of Stress Level among Mothers of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Autism Research and Treatment. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/8685950

Marasli, M., Sühendan, E., Yilmazturk, N. H., & Cok, F. (2016). Parents’ shares on social networking sites about their children: Sharenting. Anthropologist. https://doi.org/10.1080/09720073.2016.11892031

Marrus, N., & Constantino, J. N. (2016). Autism spectrum disorders. In The Curated Reference Collection in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809324-5.23581-5

McIntyre, L. L., & Brown, M. (2018). Examining the utilisation and usefulness of social support for mothers with young children with autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Intellectual and Developmental Disability. https://doi.org/10.3109/13668250.2016.1262534

Mohd Roffeei, S. H., Abdullah, N., & Basar, S. K. R. (2015). Seeking social support on Facebook for children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs). International Journal of Medical Informatics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2015.01.015

Moorhead, S. A., Hazlett, D. E., Harrison, L., Carroll, J. K., Irwin, A., & Hoving, C. (2013). A new dimension of health care: Systematic review of the uses, benefits, and limitations of social media for health communication. In Journal of Medical Internet Research. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1933

Mukhtar, D. (2018). Pengaruh Group-Based Parenting Support terhadap Stress Pengasuhan Orang tua yang Mengasuh Anak dengan Gangguan Spektrum Autis.

Nasrullah, R. (2018). Etnografi Virtual. Riset Komunikasi, Budaya dan Sosioteknologi di Internet (Vol. 2).

Pepperell, T. A., Paynter, J., & Gilmore, L. (2018). Social support and coping strategies of parents raising a child with autism spectrum disorder. Early Child Development and Care. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430.2016.1261338

Pew Research Center. (2018). Social Media Use in 2018. Pew Research Center.

Riany, Y. E., Cuskelly, M., & Meredith, P. (2016). Cultural Beliefs about Autism in Indonesia. International Journal of Disability, Development and Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/1034912X.2016.1142069

Roundtree, A. K. (2017). Social health content and activity on facebook: A survey study. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. https://doi.org/10.1177/0047281616641925

Ruggiero, T. E. (2000). Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century. Mass Communication and Society. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327825mcs0301_02

Ruggiero, T. E. (2018). Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century. In Refining Milestone Mass Communications Theories for the 21st Century. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315679402-4

Saha, A., & Agarwal, N. (2016). Modeling social support in autism community on social media. Network Modeling Analysis in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13721-016-0115-8

Segrin, C., & Flora, J. (2017). Family conflict is detrimental to physical and mental health. In Communicating interpersonal conflict in close relationships: Contexts, challenges, and opportunities.

Shepherd, N., & Parker, C. (2017). Depression in adults: Recognition and management. Clinical Pharmacist. https://doi.org/10.1211/CP.2017.20202439

Smailhodzic, E., Hooijsma, W., Boonstra, A., & Langley, D. J. (2016). Social media use in healthcare: A systematic review of effects on patients and on their relationship with healthcare professionals. BMC Health Services Research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-016-1691-0

We Are Social, Hootsuite, & DataReportal. (2020). Most popular social networks worldwide as of January 2020, ranked by number of active users (in millions). Statista. Statista Inc.

Zhang, L., Zhao, J., & Xu, K. (2016). Who creates Trends in Online Social Media: The Crowd or Opinion Leaders? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcc4.12145

DOI: https://doi.org/10.29313/mimbar.v36i1.5463

Refbacks

There are currently no refbacks.

MIMBAR : Jurnal Sosial dan Pembangunan is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.