LAUSR

BACKGROUND: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has made governments in a number of countries to issue and implement a regulation of social and physical restriction. It leaves a serious impact, one of which is anxiety experienced by parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) as the only access to therapy and education for their children has to be done online. AIM: The purpose of this study was to determine the optimization of online counseling on the anxiety in parents of children with ASD during COVID-19 pandemic. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The design of this study used pre-test-post-test design without control. The sampling technique used purposive sampling with 46 respondents. The instrument used online counseling design and Generalized Anxiety Disorders-7 which has been tested for validity and reliability. This study used marginal homogeneity test. RESULTS: The result showed that the majority of respondents’ anxiety before and after online counseling had severe and minimal anxiety (16 respondents, 34.8% and 15 respondents, 32.6%, respectively) with p = 0.012. CONCLUSIONS: There was an effect of online counseling on anxiety in parents of children with ASD during COVID-19 pandemic. This can serve as a recommendation in providing online counseling to reduce anxiety in parents of children with ASD during COVID-19 pandemic.