Peer-reviewed article
Relationship Between Health-Related Behaviors and Family Quality of Life in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Dunia Garrido, M Mar Gomez-Perez, Dafina Petrova, Miriam Arreola, Andres Catena et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined how health-related behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affect their families' quality of life. Researchers assessed 65 children aged 4-13 years and found that sleep problems and mealtime difficulties were the strongest predictors of lower family quality of life, independent of other factors like physical activity or screen time. Sleep anxiety, daytime sleepiness, and food refusal showed particularly strong associations with reduced family well-being. The findings suggest that addressing sleep and eating issues could improve overall quality of life for families of children with ASD.
Key points
- Sleep and mealtime problems were independently associated with lower family quality of life, accounting for 60% and 3% of variance respectively
- Sleep anxiety (r=.71) and daytime sleepiness (r=.70) showed particularly strong correlations with reduced family quality of life
- Food refusal in children with ASD showed strong correlation with lower family quality of life (r=.72)
- Other health behaviors including physical activity, screen time, gender, age, and core ASD traits were controlled for in the analysis
- Interventions targeting sleep habits and mealtime difficulties may enhance family quality of life in children with ASD
Limitations
The study included only 65 families and did not test an intervention, so it cannot establish whether improving sleep or mealtime behaviors would actually increase family quality of life. The cross-sectional design prevents determining causal relationships between health behaviors and family outcomes.
Abstract
Improving family quality of life (FQoL) of families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a key priority in clinical research and practice. Previous studies have suggested that certain health-related behaviors in children with ASD, such as sleep or physical activity, may affect FQoL. However, the relative and independent effects of different health-related behaviors on FQoL remain poorly understood. This study investigated the relationship between sleep, mealtime difficulties, screen time, physical activity, and FQoL in ASD. Parents of 65 children with ASD aged four to thirteen years completed a detailed assessment of their children's health-related behaviors and FQoL. A multiple regression framework was used to estimate the independent contribution of each health-related behavior to FQoL. Only sleep and mealtime problems were independently associated with lower FQoL, even after controlling for physical activity, screen time, gender, age, traits of ASD, and intelligence, accounting for a 60, and 3% of the variance, respectively. All categories of sleep and mealtime problems were associated with FQoL, with particularly strong correlations for sleep anxiety (r =.71), daytime sleepiness (r =.70), and food refusal (r =.72). In addition to core autistic features, sleep and mealtime behaviors are associated with FQoL in children with ASD. Interventions aimed at improving sleep habits and reducing mealtime difficulties many enhance FQoL in children with ASD.