3.1. Conclusion This study contributes to our understanding of the processes involved in experiencing stressors and distress in mothers of individuals with ASD. Experiences of social support, self-efficacy, and family hardiness all appear to be important constructs in how mothers experience child and life stressors. This study is the first to demonstrate that the relations between a pile-up of stressors and parent distress can be explained by mothers' appraisals of family hardiness, and how the link between stressors and hardiness is explained both by perceived social support and self-efficacy. This is an important step toward targeted interventions to strengthen hardiness in parents who are at risk for emotional difficulties or crisis in the long term, because of the compounding of multiple situational stressors. Future research is needed to examine these processes longitudinally and assess how hardiness can change through interventions that target the mediator variables.