Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Antonovsky’s salutogenic model has received considerable attention in the health sciences. Concerning issues like capacities to deal with stressful life situations in later life or factors that contribute to healthy aging (even in institutions), salutogenesis offers a promising perspective on the health and well-being of users of residential aged care.

Based on a literature search in pertinent databases, this chapter provides a review of research on salutogenesis related to residential aged care, and in comparison to community-dwelling aged. The literature is analyzed according to outcomes addressed, prediction of health outcomes, and interventions. Besides discussing empirical work, theoretical and methodological issues are briefly addressed.

Summarizing results, there is little research on the application of salutogenesis in residential aged care institutions, but there are several studies on the community-dwelling aged. The research has been restricted mostly to individuals with little or no cognitive impairment. In residential care, depression and health-related quality of life are the most common topics for research oriented at salutogenesis; concerning community-dwelling aged persons, the research topics are more diverse. There is hardly any research addressing complex questions about salutogenic processes and mechanisms, or using advanced research designs, and there are hardly any salutogenesis-inspired intervention studies.

Due to the scarcity of research, it is far too early to draw conclusions about the applicability of the salutogenic model to interventions to improve health and well-being of people in residential aged care or comparative groups in the community; there is an obvious need for more salutogenic intervention research in these groups.

This chapter briefly defines and articulates the developmental task of identity formation and the medical task of developing autonomy and self-care capacity in adolescents and young adults with chronic conditions. The psychological challenge of integrating one’s identity as an ill person with other dimensions of one’s identity, in order to feel healthy and experience life and illness as challenges worth living, is discussed. Literature is reviewed in order to provide insight on how Antonovsky’s sense of coherence construct has been shown to relate to important medical as well as psychosocial outcomes that are relevant to adolescent health and development: (1) adherence and self-care; (2) general health behaviors; (3) perceived health, quality of life, and general well-being; and (4) a sense of self and identity. With reference to the concepts of health-promoting hospitals, clinical health promotion, positive psychology, and healthy youth development, we advocate that salutogenesis should be more systematically put into practice for young people in healthcare settings.

Several considerations have triggered this Section of the book. First of all, Antonovsky claimed his key concepts within the salutogenic framework were universal, meaning SOC and GRRs could be studied in any society. The empirical evidence on SOC so far seems to support this with few exceptions. Secondly, the early critics of Antonovsky pointed out that the research mainly was concentrated around his own research team and some of his Scandinavian friends. This has never been true; we have research on salutogenesis in all continents of the World and translations of the SOC instrument into at least 49 languages. Thirdly, most scientific literature is today presented in English, meaning research in other main language groups does not appear in most literature searches. This leaves much cultural nuance outside the mainstream salutogenesis literature. Finally, it is about networking. Young researchers who plan to start studies in their countries and language groups will have great benefit of getting in contact with native researchers, enabling discussions and establishing national research teams and networks. This Section thus serves as a portal to salutogenesis writing of scholars working in languages other than English. There are already extensive language group networks such as the Spanish—Ibero American Network based at the Girona University, the French Canadian Network based in Montreal, and the German Network and other National networks.

Afrikaans is one of 11 official languages in South Africa, but with English, one of only two that is developed as academic language. Studies published in Afrikaans in which salutogenesis is addressed or in which the Afrikaans translation of Antonovsky’s sense of coherence instrument was used, have been conducted at five South African universities.

The literature search was conducted using the South African ePublications data base of Sabinet and the NEXUS data base for current and completed Masters dissertations and Ph.D. theses. The search words ‘salutogenese’, ‘kohesiesin’ and ‘Antonovsky’ were used alone and in combination. The only limitation was Afrikaans as language. A total of 79 relevant publications were found: 45 Masters dissertations, 10 Ph.D. theses and 24 journal articles. No books or book chapters published in Afrikaans could be found.

Most of the research conducted was done in psychology and industrial psychology. There were also a few studies in sport and recreation science, educational psychology, theology and even history.

Various studies described the relationship between different constructs such as sense of coherence, locus of control, job satisfaction, spirituality, self-concept, coping, burnout and stress-related symptomatology. Salutogenic characteristics were also described in different populations. Two history papers were published in which constructs (including sense of coherence) were used to interpret the experiences and behaviour of two South African historical figures.

Most of the studies were cross-sectional descriptive studies, but there were a few evaluated interventions and conceptual studies.

It has been more than 40 years since Antonovsky put forward the theory of salutogenesis in the 1970s. Chinese research institutions and researchers have learnt from, adapted, and used salutogenesis with some literature now published, though the first step towards salutogenesis was relatively late in China compared to the Western countries.

The main research environments of interest are normal universities that take up salutogenesis teaching in departments of psychology in comprehensive universities that focus on mental development research, as well as some medical schools, applying salutogenesis to health issues, and the school of public health in Fudan University is now along with this team.

The first mention of salutogenesis in Chinese literature was the study of the sense of coherence and its influencing factors. Over the decades, salutogenesis has received increasing attention. A series of publications have reviewed research progress in the salutogenesis research arena both nationally and internationally. Salutogenic literature related to particular population groups has mostly focused on the relationship between behaviors and mental health, using the sense of coherence scale as an indicator of mental health in a quantities survey. In China, there are few reports for the development of the salutogenic theoretical perspective and the salutogenic model of health in a variety of fields, especially in the area of health promotion.

There are to date no Danish research environments that stand out in relation to a focus on salutogenesis. A few Danish researchers have conducted studies using a salutogenic perspective, but the research effort appears sparse and uncoordinated and the Danish language literature on salutogenesis is limited with a scarcity of quantitative studies. The majority of Danish publications use salutogenesis as a theoretical framework from which various professions can work.

It is quite uncommon in The Netherlands to publish in Dutch so most publications about salutogenesis are in English. However, we identified 19 publications written in Dutch. These are publications in the field of development psychology, workplace health, mental health, medicine, care for people with disabilities, and musical and art therapy. In the Dutch language literature, salutogenesis is mainly conceptualized in terms of the sense of coherence, and one of its elements: meaningfulness. Generalized resistance resources are hardly mentioned. Most often salutogenesis was applied in a conceptual way (12 studies), but we also found seven studies with empirical research.

Salutogenesis has been used as a conceptual framework for different fields of science in Finnish literature since the 1980s. The concept of life control was related to the sense of coherence, including the dimensions of life satisfaction, manageability, comprehensibility and meaningfulness.

Based on our literature search, we found 12 dissertations, 9 chapters in textbooks and 6 research papers in Finnish. In the literature, salutogenesis has been used merely as one conceptual basis along with other theoretical foundations and the concepts of health-related quality of life, coping, social support, self-esteem and resources. The themes that emerged in the dissertations focused on certain diseases and coping processes as well as resources, hope and strengthening factors among young people, the sense of coherence and health and also connections between these and mental health.

Current understanding of salutogenesis creates opportunities for applying the theory as an approach, a conceptual basis, multidisciplinary collaboration, a measurement tool and also combining qualitative and quantitative methods. One challenge for the future would be to make salutogenesis theory visible in all of its levels and applications.

French-speaking researchers and clinicians worldwide have explored the concept of salutogenesis. In this short contribution, we reviewed and synthesized this literature in order to summarize the main contributions of the Francophone world to Antonovsky’s legacy. Toward this goal, we undertook a nonexhaustive review of the scientific literature to locate relevant papers on salutogenesis or its theory. The results of this search are presented in the first section of this contribution. This exercise leads us to conclude that salutogenesis is more than a concept or a theory. It is also an encompassing perspective which contributes to the emergence of a new field of research: positive approaches to health.

The concept of salutogenesis gained some interest in Germany following the publication in German of two articles by Antonovsky: ‘The salutogenic perspective: Towards a new way of looking at health and disease’, and ‘My odyssey as a stress researcher’. Antonovsky’s proposed change of perspective from the pathogenic point of view to the opposite—the salutogenic perspective of life—attracted in particular critical German medical professionals and the health movement they had initiated in the 1980s in Germany.

Yet, the German scientific community was not really convinced of the validity of the sense of coherence construct and the interest of the research community was poor. However, as a model for stress management in rehabilitation psychology and in the discipline of psychosomatic medicine, the concept of salutogenesis was adapted and has broadened the traditional behavioural perspective to include also social and societal perspectives of health. Salutogenesis has gained particular attention in Germany as a patient/client-oriented resources model of health.