Introduction and purpose: Raising a child with autism exposes parents to significant frustration, a process that compromises their mental, emotional, and cognitive well-being. Accordingly, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of emotion regulation training on distress tolerance, self-conscious emotions, and parental burnout among mothers of children with autism.
Methodology: This study was an applied experimental study utilizing a pre-test/post-test design with a control group and a two-month follow-up period. The statistical population consisted of all mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder who visited the Autism Association of Mazandaran Province in 2022. Thirty mothers were selected via convenience sampling and randomly assigned to either the experimental or control group (15 mothers in each group). Mothers in the experimental group received emotion regulation training over eight weeks, consisting of eight 90-minute sessions. The instruments used in this study included the Distress Tolerance Questionnaire (DTQ), the Self-Conscious Emotions Questionnaire (SCEQ), and the Parental Burnout Questionnaire (PBQ). Data were analyzed using mixed-design analysis of variance (ANOVA) via SPSS 23 software.
Result: The results indicated that emotion regulation training had a significant effect on distress tolerance (p < 0.001), self-conscious emotions (p < 0.001), and parental burnout (p < 0.001) among mothers of children with autism. These results remained stable at the follow-up stage.
Conclusion: By providing skills for recognizing, accepting, and managing emotions, emotion regulation training helps mothers of children with autism better tolerate psychological distress associated with caregiving pressures and reduces negative self-conscious emotions such as shame and guilt; consequently, this improvement in emotion regulation and distress tolerance significantly lowers their levels of parental burnout.