الخلاصة

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a new unique disorder. It has qualitative impairments on children and its impacts extend to all family members and his community. Parents with a child’s ASD are in need for more services, care, help and support than parents who have a normal child or any other disorder. A cross-sectional descriptive study included (80) parents who had a child with ASD enrolled at institutes for ASD caring in Al-Najaf City. The study aimed to assess and describe the parents’ issues and needs, as well as, to find out the relationship severity of ASD demographic characteristics of parents and their children. Purposive sampling is used to select parents in the study who enrolled their child at the institute for autism, residence in Al-Najaf City and have at least one biological parent as a guardian on him. The tool of the study composed of two main parts. The first part includes questions related to demographic characteristics of fathers, mothers and their child. Second part related to the family who need questionnaire scale and impacts on parents. As well as information about informants. The results revealed that (46.3%) of both mothers and fathers shared to answer the questionnaire together and more than (76%) of parents have good information about ASD and readiness to receive more information about it. More than (78%) of children have moderate to severe ASD. There is a significant relationship between severity of ASD, types of treatment used with child and degree of impacts on parents, but no significance between severity of ASD and parents health status with a p-value (0.05). Furthermore, parents reported needs to active involvement in the treatment plan of their child (99.375%) among other needs. Also, parents reported need to information, help and support as a priorities needs. The study concluded that ASD have more impacts on parents when the severity of it increased. Parents need to services and support; because in Iraq and especially in Al-Najaf City do not have a special program to diagnose and treat ASD. So, it is recommended to establish a special multidisciplinary plan (Ministry of Health, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Ministry of Education and Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs) to support and reduce impacts on parents and their child.