Abstract
Background. Mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder are at increased risk of emotional distress, emotion-regulation difficulties, and parental burnout. During the full-scale war in Ukraine, chronic caregiving demands coexist with disrupted rehabilitation services, displacement, instability of social networks, and pervasive uncertainty. Recent meta-analyses support the potential value of interventions directly targeting parental mental health, although effects vary according to intervention content, duration, study design, and selected outcomes. Structured Ukrainian-language programmes evaluated with a control condition and follow-up remain scarce.
Aim. To evaluate the preliminary effectiveness and safety of an eight-session multicomponent psychological support programme for emotion-regulation difficulties, parental burnout, subjective well-being, emotional depletion, resilience, and hope among Ukrainian mothers of children with autism spectrum disorder.
Methods. A controlled non-randomized quasi-experimental design was used. Fifty-six mothers of children with a documented autism spectrum disorder diagnosis were included: 30 completed an eight-week group programme and 26 formed a no-additional-intervention control group during the primary observation period. The programme integrated psychoeducation, cognitive-behavioural elements, mindfulness practices, emotion-regulation exercises, work with social support, values, and future orientation; metaphorical associative cards served as adjunctive visual-reflective prompts. Assessments were conducted before and after the programme, with an additional three-month follow-up in the intervention group. Measures included the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (Gratz & Roemer, 2004; Ukrainian adaptation: Sak & Fedotova, 2023), Parental Burnout Assessment (Roskam et al., 2018), modified BBC Subjective Well-being Scale (Pontin et al., 2013; Ukrainian adaptation: Karamushka et al., 2022), Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale-10 (Campbell-Sills & Stein, 2007; Ukrainian adaptation: Shkolina et al., 2020), the emotional-depletion subscale of the Personal Resources Inventory (Savchenko et al., 2022), and the Hope subscale of WIPPF 2.0 (Peseschkian, 1985; Ukrainian adaptation: Serdiuk, 2022). Post-intervention group differences were examined using ANCOVA adjusted for baseline scores.
Results. At post-intervention, the intervention group had lower adjusted scores than controls for emotion-regulation difficulties, F(1, 53) = 16.85, p < .001, partial η² = .232; parental burnout, F(1, 53) = 8.69, p = .006, partial η² = .135; and emotional depletion, F(1, 53) = 6.63, p = .014, partial η² = .106. The intervention group had higher subjective well-being, F(1, 53) = 5.71, p = .024, partial η² = .093; CD-RISC-10 resilience, F(1, 53) = 16.25, p < .001, partial η² = .226; and hope, F(1, 53) = 6.44, p = .016, partial η² = .104. The largest within-intervention pre–post effects concerned emotion-regulation difficulties (d_z = −.83), subjective well-being (d_z = .80), emotional depletion (d_z = −.78), and CD-RISC-10 (d_z = .78). At three months, mean emotion-regulation and parental-burnout scores had not returned to baseline. Seven of 30 participants experienced a temporary increase in distress after early sessions; all episodes resolved within 5–7 days and no participant discontinued.
Scientific novelty. This research offers empirical support for a short programme designed to help Ukrainian mothers adjust to raising a child with autism and cope with the changes brought about by war. The programme differs from similar programmes, which mainly concentrate on educating mothers in ways to effectively raise their child, as it addresses issues relevant to the mothers, including emotion regulation, resources, burnout and meaning.
Practical significance. This group-support programme is a promising tool that may provide a standard structure for inclusive resource centres, rehabilitation services, and psychological services when delivered by professionals trained in risk identification and with provisions for ongoing monitoring of clients for distress. The results from this study warrant conducting a full-scale randomizedsed trial of this intervention against an active control.
Conclusions: Participation in the programme resulted in better subjective well-being, resilience, and hope, whereas the occurrence of emotion-regulation difficulties, burnout and emotional depletion was significantly reduced. However, due to non-random assignment, the sample size was small, the data were self-reported, and there was a lack of follow-up on the control group; hence, the results are merely indicative until further research can isolate the effect of the metaphorical cards and other programme components.
Keywords: autism spectrum disorder; mothers; emotion regulation; parental burnout; psychological intervention; resilience; subjective well-being; quasi-experiment.
Date received: 16.06.2026
Date accepted: 23.07.2026
Date published: 30.08.2026
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