Aaron Antonovsky

Aaron Antonovsky PhD, (December 19, 1923 – July 15, 1994) was an American/Israeli sociologist and academician whose work emphasized the relationship between stress, health and well-being.

Antonovsky was born in the United States but emigrated to Israel in 1960 after completing his PhD at Yale University. For a time he held positions in Jerusalem at the Israeli Institute for Applied Social Science and in the Department of Medical Sociology at the University of Jerusalem/Hadassah. During this period his early work emphasized social class differences in morbidity and mortality. In 1972 he helped establish the medical school at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and held the Kenen-Lunenfeld Chair in Medical Sociology. During his twenty years in that Department, Antonovsky developed his theory of health and illness, which he termed Salutogenesis. This model was described in his book, published in 1979, called "Health, Stress and Coping", followed by another work, eight years later: "Unraveling the Mystery of Health" which at the time was acclaimed among health scholars as an important contribution to understanding the relationship between health and illness. A key concept in Antonovsky's salutogenic theory concerns how specific personal dispositions serve to make individuals more resilient to the stressors they encounter in daily life. Antonovsky identified these characteristics, which he claimed helped a person better cope (and remain health) by providing "a sense of coherence (SOC)" about life and the challenges one faces. A measure of Sense of Coherence has been developed. Recent research in psychoneuroimmunology has supported many of the basic assertions of the relationship between emotions and health contained in Antonovsky's theory of Salutogenesis. Antonovsky died in 1994, but research using his theory continues by social scientists in many countries aound the world.

References

#Antonovsky, A. "Health, Stress and Coping". San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 1979
#Antonovsky, A. "Unraveling The Mystery of Health - How People Manage Stress and Stay Well", San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1987
#Henkin, Y., & Sperber, A.D. Aaron Antonovsky: Editor and Idealist. "Israel Journal of Medical Sciences". 1996; 32(3-4):163-5.
#Eriksson, M. & Lindstöm, B. Validity of Antonovsky’s sense of coherence scale: a systematic review." Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health", 2005;59:460-466