Sense Of Salutogenesis

Salutogenesis is a term used by Aaron Antonovsky for the first time. The goal of salutogenesis is to draw people's attention on the sources of health and healing individuals, exploring the reasons why some people remain healthy when facing stressful situations, while others confronting with the same difficulties, get sick (Lindström and Eriksson, 2005). Resilience in difficult situations depends on the individual's Sense of Coherence, that is a global orientation to life, based on self-confidence regarding challenges, confidence in personals skills and resources in order to cope with difficult events, and the belief that negative events may have a meaning or a sense in the person's life (Antonovsky,1987; Alivia, Guadagni, & di Sarsina, 2011).
A low sense of coherence is independently a predictor for depression and quality of life on patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer (Hyphantis et al., 2011; Freitas et al., 2015). In a sample of 162 women diagnosed with breast cancer, Rohani et al. (2015) found that sense of coherence was a mediator of health-related quality of life dimensions. A qualitative study conducted on women who were at risk for hereditary cancer of breast or ovarian cancer concluded that understanding their stories of life, especially the "mother's death" due to ovarian cancer and the finding of coherence contributed to the adoption of salutogenetic behaviors in order to prevent cancer in their future families (Mæland, Eriksen & Synnes,