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Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the quality of life and daily living skills of children and adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Method: Twenty-one patients with autistic spectrum disorders with coexisting mental retardation (ASD group; 14 males, 7 females; mean age: 11.4 (sd: 4.6) years) and 18 patients with only mental retardation (MR group; 14 males and 4 females; mean age: 10.8 (sd: 3.1) years) were recruited from Outpatient Unit of the Istanbul University, Faculty of Medicine, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Department. All patients were diagnosed according to DSM-IV criteria and their mothers completed the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory and Autism Behavior Checklist (ABC). All mothers also filled in the Daily living skills scale (DLSS), formed by the authors, and rated their son’s or daughter’s level of independence on 28 items covering the domains of personal care, meal-related activities and housekeeping. The Chi-Square, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis and Spearman Correlation Tests were used for the statistical analyses.
Results: Both groups were comparable for age, gender, socio-economic status and level of mental retardation (for all p<0.10). Clinically assessed level of communication was lower in the ASD group (p: 0.035), however mother reported language score in the ABC did not differ (p: 0.32) between groups. Mean scores of the mother reported total ABC scores were 77.4 (sd: 35.9) and 56.4 (sd: 34.7) in the ASD and MR groups, but the difference did not reach statistical significance (0.08). The groups did not differ in the physical, psychosocial and total quality of life scores, however, daily living skills score was significantly lower in the ASD group (p: 0.02). The DLSS score in the participants correlated with the clinically assessed level of language (p: 0.001, r: 0.52), but statistically significant association could not be demonstrated with age (p: 0.17), level of MR (i.e., mild, moderate or severe) (p: 0.13) and ABC language score (p: 0.17). When the associations were analyzed separately for each group, clinically assessed level of language correlated with the DLSS score in the ASD group (p: 0.005, r: 0.59) but not in the MR group (p: 0.78, r: 0.07).
Conclusions: The first results of this ongoing study revealed that children and adolescents with ASD have significant limitations in a variety of daily living skills compared to those with similar mental levels. Clinical level of language may be a more important predictor of daily living skills in patients with ASD than the age and IQ levels.