Aaron Antonovsky

Academic and sociologist

• Born: December 19, 1923
• Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
• Died: July 7, 1994
• Place of death: Beersheba, Israel

Education: Yale University

Significance: After being intrigued to learn that women who survived the Holocaust often enjoyed unexpectedly good health, Aaron Antonovsky dedicated much of his life to the study of the effects of stress on health and developed the theory of salutogenesis.

Background

Aaron Antonovsky was born in Brooklyn, New York, the second child of Jewish parents who came to America from Russia by way of England and Canada. He and his older sister and younger brother often helped their parents in their laundry shop. His parents valued education and ensured that Antonovsky attended a good high school and college.

During his adolescence, Antonovsky was part of Hashomer Hatzair, a Jewish youth movement that supported Zionism. The movement, formed shortly after World War I (1914–1918), promoted and supported the formation of a Jewish nation in the land that became Israel.

Antonovsky was drafted into the US Army during World War II (1939–1945) and served in the Pacific theater and New Guinea. Following the war, he spent time in the newly formed state of Israel and helped found a kibbutz, or agriculturally based community collective. In this environment, the twenty-six-year-old was able to see his vision of a socialistic society enacted.

In the early 1950s, Antonovsky returned to the United States and completed a doctoral degree in sociology at Yale University in 1956. His interest in social issues such as class inequality, minorities, discrimination, and immigration grew, and his research and writing began to concentrate on these areas. By 1960, Antonovsky emigrated from the United States to Israel and established a career in medical sociology.

Life's Work

Antonovsky settled in the Israeli town of Beersheba, where he helped in the foundation of a medical school and continued to study the relationship between mental and physical health. He authored an article in 1967 that was among the first to draw attention to the effects of social class on health. While teaching at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, he encouraged his students to consider their patients' life circumstances when analyzing their health. This included such factors as the patients' families and other relationships, jobs and financial situations, and other indicators of support or stress.

In 1971, Antonovsky conducted a study on how 1,150 Israeli women were adjusting to the changes brought on by cessation of the monthly menstrual cycle and the physical and emotional changes of menopause. A questionnaire used as part of the study identified that 77 of the women were Holocaust survivors who had been imprisoned in concentration camps. Antonovsky was intrigued by the fact that while these women were less likely to report an easy time adjusting to menopause, many of the Holocaust survivors still enjoyed surprisingly good health.

These women had suffered some of the most severe traumas a person can endure, including a major world war, persecution, imprisonment, and mistreatment, but many were still leading happy and relatively healthy lives. This led Antonovsky to study what aspects of their lives helped them to be healthy despite the challenges they had faced. It also led him to investigate how people develop the resiliency that allows them to cope and remain mentally and physically healthy. Antonovsky named this area of study salutogenesis. It focuses on the life factors that support health instead of the factors that cause illness, an area of study known as pathogenesis. Researching and writing about salutogenesis dominated Antonovsky's life work for more than two decades.

A key aspect of Antonovsky's salutogenesis approach was the theory of sense of coherence (SOC). This theory states that how a person sees the world and the degree to which the person feels about life has a significant influence on health. Antonovsky did not discount life stresses as a cause of disease but instead attempted to understand what was present in the lives of many people that allowed them to remain healthy or even improve their health despite these stresses. Through his research, Antonovsky identified the concept of general resistance resources (GRRs). These are factors such as self-esteem, social support, intelligence, education, financial resources, and healthy behaviors that promote and support a positive view of the world and life.

Antonovsky spent much of his professional career researching and writing about aspects of his theory of salutogenesis. In his 1979 book Health, Stress, and Coping, Antonovsky explained that salutogenesis comes from the Latin word salus, or "health," and the Greek word genesis, or "origin." Another work, Unraveling the Mysteries of Health: How People Manage Stress and Stay Well, was published in 1987 and introduced the concept of factors of "negative entropy." According to Antonovsky, these factors, or life conditions, countered the natural tendency toward entropy, or disorder, within a living being. This work is considered by many to represent Antonovsky's best work. Although it was originally intended to be a revision of his 1979 work, it became a unique book that was popular; it was translated from English into numerous other languages.

In addition to his research and writing, Antonovsky spent much of his time teaching. He was the head of the sociology of health department at Israel's Ben-Gurion University. During his career, he was also part of the staff in the department of medical sociology at the Hebrew University and the Israel Institute of Applied Social Research, both in Jerusalem.

Antonovsky retired in 1993, but he remained active in promoting the idea of increasing the factors that support health. He was part of efforts by the World Health Organization to incorporate support for health-promoting factors in world health plans in early 1994. He died in Israel on July 7, 1994, from complications of acute myeloid leukemia.

Impact

At the time of Antonovsky's death, the concept of salutogenesis was beginning to be accepted and promoted by many others who were not associated with his work. In the years since then, his concept of sense of coherence has been increasingly recognized as an important factor in health and quality of life. In the twenty-first century, health professionals are increasingly trained to incorporate the concepts initially identified and promoted by Antonovsky in the treatment of patients.

Personal Life

Antonovsky married before he settled in Israel. He and his wife, Helen, had one child.

Bibliography

Benz, Carina et al. "Culture in Salutogenesis: The Scholarship of Aaron Antonovsky." Global Health Promotion,vol. 21, no. 4, 2014, pp. 16–23.

Hanson, Anders. Workplace Health Promotion: A Salutogenic Approach.Authorhouse, 2007, pp. 113–42.

"Israel Society & Culture: Hashomer Hatzair." Jewish Virtual Library, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/hashomer-hatzair. Accessed 1 Sept. 2017.

Lindstrom, Bengt, and Monica Eriksson. "Contextualizing Salutogenesis and Antonovsky in Public Health Development." Health Promotion International, Sept. 2006, academic.oup.com/heapro/article/21/3/238/559289/Contextualizing-salutogenesis-and-Antonovsky-in. Accessed 1 Sept. 2017.

Lindstrom, Bengt, and Monica Eriksson. "Professor Aaron Antonovsky (1923–1994): The Father of the Salutogenesis." Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, vol. 59, no. 6, 2005, p. 511, jech.bmj.com/content/59/6/511. Accessed 1 Sept. 2017.

"Salutogenesis." The Resource Center on Salutogenesis at the University West, www.salutogenesis.hv.se/eng/Salutogenesis.5.html. Accessed 1 Sept. 2017.