94 / 2019-10-11 16:52:10

The Economic Burden in Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and its correlation with Interval Time from Diagnosis to Treatment of Children

ASD,autism symptoms,family economic burden,interval time

B. 公共卫生相关主题 > Track - B 默认专题

The autism spectrum disorders (ASD) brought economic burden to children's family. The survey aimed to describe the economic burden in families with autistic children and explored its underlying correlation with the interval time from diagnosis to treatment of children. The economic burden in two periods (12-month period after diagnosis and the recent 12 months) of 136 families with one autistic child were obtained. 40.4% of the families reported the ASD-related costs accounting over a half of the household income in the recent 12 months. The median direct and indirect economic costs of those families in 12-month period after diagnosis were 42067.48 RMB and 800.00 RMB, respectively. The median direct and indirect economic costs of those families in recent 12 months were 28620.00 RMB and 3579.77 RMB, respectively. The general linear models analysis suggested that higher interval time from diagnosis to treatment ( >6 months ), predicted higher total economic burden in 12-month period after diagnosis. Families with autistic children had relatively heavy economic burden in the study. We suggested that one of the target focus of the government to reduce economic burden of families with autistic children was shorten the interval time from diagnosis to treatment of children.