The sense of coherence in older persons: Connections between subjective health and physical complaints

In Antonovsky's salutogenesis model, a sense of coherence is identified as a major resource for raising resistance to stress. A high sense of coherenc e, made up of the components ,,comprehensibility", ,,manageability" and ,,m eaningfullness" is seen to have a positive influence on health. In the curr ent study a representative sample of n = 566 senior citizens, aged 60 and o ver, taken from the normal German population, was asked to complete the Ger man version of Antonovsky's,Sense of Coherence Scale" (SOC-Scale). The aim was to establish a possible connection between sense of coherence and subje ctive health, physical complaints and somatoform disorders. The influence o f socio-cultural variables such as age, gender, education and income level was also taken into consideration. The over 60-years-olds proved to have a poorer sense of coherence than the groups aged 18-40 or 41-60 years, regard less of gender. Older people with higher education had a better sense of co herence than those with a lower level of education. A higher sense of coher ence was related to better subjective health, fewer physical complaints and less somatoform disorders, thus proving its central relevance for health i n advanced age. Our own shortend version of the SOC-Scale with only nine it ems (Leipziger Kurzskala SOC-LS; Schumacher et al., 2000) showed a high pos itive correlation with the original 29-item scale, making it more suitable for use with older subjects.