Decision-making around pain and its management during labour and birth
Elaine Jefford, Julie Jomeen in Empowering Decision-Making in Midwifery, 2019
Salutogenesis is a theory of health that focuses on maximising the strength and well-being of each individual rather than focusing on risk and disease. In the childbirth literature, salutogenesis has been in the spotlight in recent years, with various authors expressing how this approach can be used to improve healthcare systems including maternity care (Ferguson et al., 2015). Although the Ferguson et al. (2015) study was conducted within a high-income country, the impact of salutogenesis on healthcare systems can be applied to any maternity care location around the world. A salutogenic approach focuses on personal resources and the direction towards health, instead of looking at individuals as only either healthy or sick (Antonovsky, 1979). A key concept of the theory is a ‘sense of coherence’, which consists of three components: meaningfulness, manageability and comprehensibility. A person’s sense of coherence is a predictor of health and has been shown to influence the outcome of childbirth (Ferguson et al., 2015). However, the theory of salutogenesis entails more than a sense of coherence; it is a broad theory which focuses on resources, competencies, abilities and assets of the individual, the group and society.
The Community as a Catalyst for Healthier Behaviors
James M. Rippe in Lifestyle Medicine, 2019
Just as pathogenesis looks at the origins of disease, salutogenesis explores and promotes the origins of good health and prosperity for individuals.27 In Latin, the root salus represents safety, salvation, and welfare.28 Drawing from Roman religious beliefs, Salus was the goddess of safety and welfare of both the individual and the state.29 Antonovsky developed a central construct for salutogenesis that he termed sense of coherence (SOC). SOC is determined by the degree to which individuals perceive their lives to be meaningful, manageable, and comprehensible. In a salutogenic context, Antonovsky defines meaningful as the extent to which individuals feel that life makes sense emotionally and that the problems and demands of life are both welcome and worthy of commitment and engagement. Manageable refers to the extent to which individuals perceive that resources are both available and adequate to meet the demands being placed on them by the environment. Comprehensible is viewed as the extent to which individuals are able to make cognitive sense of the information they are taking in while in a specific context or environment.27
Spirituality and midwifery care
Patricia Lindsay, Ian Peate in Introducing the Social Sciences for Midwifery Practice, 2015
By being with, believing in and empowering women, spiritual midwifery care is centred on the concept of salutogenesis – the creation of wellness (Davis-Floyd, 2008). It is thus a more holistic approach than technomedicine, which focuses on correcting illness and deviance. Again this concept aligns with Eastern healing traditions, which aim to resolve problems by focusing on strength and synergy rather than homing in on weakness and cutting out individual symptoms (Chan et al., 2006). Central to the concept of salutogenesis is coherence. A salutogenic approach recognises that physiology and wellbeing are influenced by a web of cultural, social, environmental and psychological factors (Downe and McCourt, 2008). Coherence, which builds resilience to adverse events, results when all these factors are working together (Downe, 2010). Thus midwives are able positively to influence physiology and wellbeing by being present with a woman, providing a safe environment and enabling her to feel stronger emotionally.
Commitment to physical activity and health: a case study of a Paralympic Gold medallist
Published in Disability and Rehabilitation, 2018
Bridie Kean, Florin Oprescu, Marion Gray, Brendan Burkett
In case studies, conceptual frameworks can be used to define the context of the study [15]. In this case, we used a salutogenic model to define “health”, an important contextual factor in this study. Salutogenesis, the study of health origins and causes, considers how to create good health [16]. In this sense, this model offers an alternative to the pathogenic model of health, where health is considered the absence of disease [16]. Rather, salutogenesis focuses on the creation of health, despite challenging situations. Carol not only successfully remained physically active after her diagnosis with MS, she then became an elite para-cyclist, winning a Gold medal at the London 2012 Paralympic games. Therefore, this model of health provided an aligning theoretical framework for exploring the research question about how physical activity played a role in Carol’s life.
Development and Effect of a Salutogenic Program for Rural Elderly Women on Depression and Suicidal Ideation
Published in Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 2021
Hyun-Joo Oh, Moonhee Gang, Myung-Sook Kim
The salutogenic orientation which focuses on the origins of health explains why people stay at the positive end of the health or disease continuum despite stressors ranging from the microbiological to the societal-cultural levels (Antonovsky, 1987). The main concept in salutogenesis, sense of coherence (SOC), is a global orientation to viewing life as comprehensive, manageable, and meaningful or coherent (Antonovsky, 1987). Person uses SOC in order to perceive challenges as predictable and within control, facilitating motivation to identify and use resources efficiently in order to preserve health (Tan et al., 2016). It consists of three sub-concepts; comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness (Antonovsky, 1987). Also, sufficient generalized resistance resources (GRRs) such as money, ego identity, knowledge, intelligence, coping strategy, social support, commitment, cultural stability, and religious beliefs help to resolve challenges and strengthen SOC, whereas inadequate or inappropriate GRRs cause challenges to remain unresolved or poorly resolved and weaken SOC (Maass et al., 2017).
Collaborative positive psychology: solidarity, meaning, resilience, wellbeing, and virtue in a time of crisis
Published in International Review of Psychiatry, 2020
As our population grows and becomes increasingly interdependent, groups within society continue to seek out new ways to support sustainable well-being. While collaboration capabilities have become increasingly important, they are not widely cultivated (Hogan, Hall, et al., 2017). Notwithstanding recent globalised group dynamics, the evolutionary significance of small group dynamics continues to be influential in shaping societal wellbeing. Small groups influence societal designs in government, community, school, hospital, workplace settings, and in the science and technology teams that create new artefacts of culture. Emergent properties of salutogenesis including a sense of coherence (SOC), or the extent to which one has a pervasive, enduring though dynamic, feeling of confidence that one’s environment is predictable and that things will work out as well as can reasonably be expected (Antonovsky, 1987), arise in a collective context where comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness is worked out by collaborative groups. A modest starting point for a more collaborative positive psychology recognises that understanding human systems is challenging (Hogan, 2008), and even when understanding is achieved influencing human systems is difficult (Hogan et al., 2018), in part because many of the levers of influence manifest in complex group dynamics. While high functioning teams can arise as powerful collaborative groups shaping salutogenesis (Forsyth, 2014), their potential for positive influence is often ignored or underdeveloped.
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