Acceptance as a strategy is especially effective in situation where not much can be done about having an autistic child within the family except keeping the illness well within control. This can be done, only when the caregiver himself/herself is able to put aside the emotional baggage to an extent and be involved in effectively looking after the patient. The responses on the coping checklist and the unstructured interview revealed that acceptance as a coping style was to an extent used by the subjects to make success even out of this unfortunate situation. However, during the in depth interview it was observed that most of the parents felt that one day, their child would get alright or become “normal”.
Regarding the next dimension, religion, the results indicated that 20% of the subject used religion as a coping strategy often, whereas 50% used them moderately and only 30% used it rarely. One interesting finding was that most of the subjects responded positively when it came to ‘praying to God’. With the help of the unstructured interview, it was found that most of them felt it was a way of ventilation and also it assured them of being heard. Although most of the subjects gained strength from belief in god yet they were not overly involved with the rituals. In a study done by Rammohan, Rao and Subbakrishna (2002), it was found that
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The results revealed that 60% of the subjects used denial rarely, 10% used it often and 30% used it moderately. Denial refers to the refusal of the truth or existence of a thing. Talking about denial in the present context, it is the denial of existence of a problem or a stressful situation. In a study by Rammohan, Rao and Subbakrishna (1989), it was found that patient’s age, education level, level of functioning and caregiver’s use of denial as a coping strategy were significant predictors of care giving burden. The study also revealed that parents used more of denial as a coping