Photo by S&B Vonlanthen on Unsplash
As a parent, it’s important to watch out for the mental health of children with autism. There is a significant overlap in the symptoms of the disorder, versus symptoms of mental illness. This makes it very difficult for parents to make distinctions. Children diagnosed with autism may see mental health professionals in some capacity. Mental health professionals and educators are a great resource for noticing and discussing changes in a child’s behavior.
Truly, it might be very confusing for a parent when their child is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). For parents that don’t have direct interpersonal experience with the disorder, it requires learning about the details and intricacies of how the disorder presents itself.
Autism and Mental Illness
Some children are misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) before receiving a diagnosis of ASD. Mental illness and autism are not the same. Autism is considered a developmental delay or a developmental disability. A spectrum disorder label tells us that some people have very mild symptoms and are quite high-functioning, while others have very severe difficulties and need a great deal of support from others.
So, although a child can be diagnosed with ASD, they may also have mental illness alongside it. Anxiety and depression occur at a higher rate among people with autism. After a parent, regardless of the age of the child, gets that diagnosis, they will need to nurture that child in a different way in order to treat or prevent mental illness.
The parent can support the child by treating what comes, with medication and/or therapy, or any number of alternative therapies. There are a plethora of resources to match individual accessibility of resources. An ASD child will most likely be treated by mental health professionals and be seen from a young age, or at least in childhood.
Mental Health Warning Signs for Parents
Parenting a child with ASD means looking out for the child’s mental health alongside the learning difficulties, while also looking out for their own mental stability as a parent. It goes back to the concept that if you are a caretaker, in order to help the person who needs care, you must be in good health yourself, first and foremost. Otherwise, you won’t have much to offer that other person and it can easily lead to caretaker burnout. In order to be there for your child, who is bound to struggle, you must first take care of yourself and control your own anxieties about their disorder and mental health. Highly stressed parents can experience their own mental health problems in raising a child with ASD.
According to the Mayo Clinic, warning signs of mental illness in children include:
- Persistent sadness — two or more weeks
- Withdrawing from or avoiding social interactions
- Hurting oneself or talking about hurting oneself
- Talking about death or suicide
- Outbursts or extreme irritability
- Out-of-control behavior that can be harmful
- Drastic changes in mood, behavior or personality
- Changes in eating habits
- Loss of weight
- Difficulty sleeping
- Frequent headaches or stomachaches
- Difficulty concentrating
- Changes in academic performance
- Avoiding or missing school
Self-Care for Parents
A lot of these warning signs are already occurring in the day-to-day life of a child with ASD. It takes some keen observation skills and deliberate investigation to stay aware of subtle changes that may point to a problem. The key takeaways for parents are to make keen observations about your child and notice when something that might be an autism behavior turns into something else.
Stress and autism go hand-in-hand for the parent. The daily challenges of being a parent are intensified, and parents can become so focused on their child’s needs that they forget their own. Parent-led support groups are an amazing resource for parents to acknowledge each other’s struggles and provide tips and strategies from the older kids to the younger kids. It’s a wonderful place for referrals of mental health professionals and ideas and solutions. Parents who have been through it already are such a useful resource.
For the children with ASD – and for the parents of these children – it is very important to promote mental health, address mental health problems as they come up, and support the needs of parents. It is the parents and mental health professionals who are the most likely to identify mental health crises that come up in the lives of those with ASD. Parents need to have internal and external resources to handle their child’s behaviors. Autism kids need all the love and support that parents can provide! They are so often misunderstood, and they deserve so much.
