Health, Mental Health and Quality of Life
摘要
This chapter focuses on how sense of coherence (SOC) impacts health, mental health, QoL and health behaviour, presenting the current state of knowledge from a population and a professional perspective. The first research around the SOC concept was focused on general samples in large population studies aiming at testing the SOC scales. Thereafter, professionals in the health-care sector run research on different patients groups. Nowadays, there is research highlighting how professionals themselves can benefit from the salutogenic theory, in managing work-related stress, especially its core concept SOC. Health, mental health and QoL are defined based on the salutogenic theory. Mental health is understood in terms of flourishing (good mental health) and languishing (poor mental health). SOC seems to have an impact on the QoL; the stronger the SOC, the better the QoL. And similarly, SOC has an impact on health through a mediating and moderating function on stress. In addition, a weaker SOC is linked to higher mortality risks in the general adult population. Among SOC components, meaningfulness seems to be a key predictor of mortality. In addition, research on the impact of SOC on health behaviours follows the same track, the stronger the SOC the healthier behaviour.